Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to speak to the Bloc supply day motion that calls on the House to order the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to study the issue of organized crime, to analyse avenues available to parliament to combat these criminals, and to report back to the House by October 31, 2000.
Today the government side of the House is being forced by the opposition to discuss organized crime. We will see how little it will do, if anything. The people of Surrey Central are anxious to do something about organized crime and its effect on our country, our cities, our region, our children, and many other aspects of our lives.
The weak Liberal government that has no vision and no political will keeps our criminal justice system weak. There are less and less resources, money and effort going to our law enforcement community. We can clearly see this in Surrey. We feel the effects of the scarce resources of the RCMP which is trying to preserve and protect our communities.
The immigration minister tells the Prime Minister to adopt a new slogan. The motto is that Canada is the place to be. The Prime Minister brags about that. There is no political will on Liberal benches to give B.C. and the rest of Canada the RCMP services that are needed. Because of this, international criminals know that Canada is the number one country and the place to be.
The Liberals already know that organized crime has a great effect on our country. There is no need to study it. Illegal migrants arrive at our airports and on our coasts. They are brought here by organized criminals, and the Liberals do nothing about it.
They do nothing about corruption in our embassies. When it comes to filtering out criminals our embassies are just like sieves. In Hong Kong 2,000 visas were stolen. Are gentle people stealing them and using them? No, it is organized crime. It is criminals who stole the visas and used them to bring over 2,000 criminals into Canada, and the Liberals do nothing about it.
I did something about it when my constituents told me about corruption at the embassies at New Delhi and Islamabad. Legitimate immigrants were harassed while criminals were buying their way into Canada.
I got results. Was I lucky? No. I did the work. I had the political will to get to the bottom of these allegations of crime and corruption on behalf of the people I was elected to represent.
I took action on their behalf. I went to the RCMP. They were glad to work with me and they did a good job. People were fired as a result of my efforts and the corruption was cleaned up, for a while at least.
The Liberals keep the RCMP starved of resources: money, equipment and personnel. The Liberals do it with our military as well. They starve our emergency preparedness, too. The Liberals leave only four officers patrolling the B.C.-Washington border near my constituency. Our ports and docks are understaffed.
Perhaps only 5% of containers are inspected at the Vancouver port, but many of them contain drugs and other things being smuggled for organized crime. The Liberals are not serious about fighting organized crime. If they were they would dispatch the military on a special two-day mission to open the 95% of containers that have not been inspected. Let us get to work.
We know that there are refugee claimants on our streets selling drugs. We know they have been arrested, but the police tell us they are back on the street within hours, or at least the next day, after being slightly slapped on the wrist. Why does the government not do something about it? It is a shame.
Third world people are being enslaved into a life of crime. They are being sent to the U.S. via Canada. What do the Liberals do about it? Nothing. The CIA and the FBI in the U.S. are furious about what is happening in Canada. They are furious about our Prime Minister because he is cutting budgets, dragging his feet and not upholding Canada's part in fighting crime in North America.
The government knows about money laundering operations in our country. Organized crime has built a very large, multibillion dollar underground economy. The weak Liberal government has done nothing about it.
Last week the newspapers published 10 ways to launder money and those are the 10 ways the Liberals have refused to prevent money laundering.
As a former credit union director, I know that our federal government is not doing enough to help prevent fraud through our financial institutions. There are many areas where the government has dropped the ball on combating organized crime, including industrial espionage, white collar crime, national security risks and others.
The Liberal government should have introduced legislation to protect the rights of civil servants who come forward to expose corruption in government. It should have done this long ago. In other countries the legal rights of public servants who blow the whistle are protected. They are rewarded. In Canada we need at least to protect the public servants who report, in good faith, evidence of wrongdoing. They should not be subject to disciplinary action, as the government has shown in the last few years.
Canada needs a mechanism for our public servants to follow when they detect wrongdoing, including mismanagement, misleading information, cover-ups and other things like the issue we are debating today.
I will soon be putting forward a bill for the government to support that will protect and reward whistleblowers. The purpose of the act will be to establish a procedure and provide appropriate rewards and incentives for whistleblowing. Everyone knows about the work of Brian McAdam, who exposed corruption in our Hong Kong embassy.
The sidewinder investigation should certainly be of value and in the best interests of Canadians. My hon. colleague has already spoken about it. For three months Fabian Dawson, a Canadian journalist working out of B.C., has been publishing articles chronicling corruption in our federal government's overseas missions.
We commend these Canadians for their work, but where is the government? Where are the Liberals? Why do the Liberals not investigate what Fabian is writing about? Why do they not help him? Why will they not take action when our media uncovers things through good journalistic investigation?
Today we are looking for answers to the problem of organized crime. What can parliament do? It is easy. The people of Surrey and all Canadians know how easy it is. Contrary to the motion we are debating, there is no need to study this problem. We already know the answers. Parliament can legislate tougher penalties. Parliament can provide whistleblowers with protection and rewards so that they can come forward with the evidence of corruption, exposing the techniques and modus operandi of organized criminals and gangs like the triads.
Rather than this weak Liberal government listening to them and taking appropriate action, rewarding whistleblowers like Brian McAdam and Corporal Read, it tries to shut them up and muzzle them while intimidating and threatening them. This weak government should see to it that the laws which are already in our statute books are enforced. The government can do that by providing our law enforcement community with what it needs to get the job done.
In Surrey the RCMP is always short of staff, equipment, time and resources. There is no reason for that except that the Liberals are starving the force of what it needs. We are the fastest growing community in Canada and this government is starving our city of police protection from organized crime. It is a shame.
I ask this weak Liberal government to wake up. Rather than sitting on its hands, looking like an empty bag, it should get tough on organized crime and send a strong message to criminals around the world on behalf of the people of Surrey, B.C. and all Canadians. It should tell those criminals that Canada is not the place to be.