Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on the motion, which may be made votable, introduced by the Bloc Quebecois on one of the opposition days provided for in the agreement between the parliamentary leaders of the various parties represented in the House.
The full motion reads as follows:
That this House instruct the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to conduct a study of organized crime, to analyse the options available to Parliament to effectively combat the activities of criminal groups and to report to the House no later than October 31, 2000.
In March 1998, Angus Reid conducted an omnibus survey containing questions about organized crime. The results of the survey said it all: 91% of the population described organized crime as a problem, and one Canadian out of two thought that it was a serious problem; 21% of the population thought that existing efforts to combat organized crime were adequate, and 77% wanted to see such efforts increased. Finally, the same survey showed that residents of Quebec and British Columbia were more anxious about organized crime than other Canadians.
For the Bloc Quebecois to have set aside as a possible theme for this day a subject as important for our collective future as sovereignty and anti-democratic measures to control that process being dreamt up by the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and the Prime Minister is a sign that the situation is critical with respect to organized crime.
Since our arrival in the House in 1993, a number of incidents have had a sobering impact on our existence as ordinary citizens wishing to live in peace and harmony. Let us recall briefly some of the more tragic among them.
In 1995, during a war between biker gangs for the control of a territory, Daniel Desrochers, an 11-year old boy, was killed by the explosion of a bomb in the Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, in the east end of Montreal.
A few months later, a bomb went off in Saint-Nicolas, just south of Quebec City, and windows were shattered, including those in a baby's bedroom.
In 1997, Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau, two prison guards, were killed in cold blood, presumably by bikers.
In a report by the Canadian Press published in Le Soleil of March 20, 1998, the then Quebec minister of public security, Pierre Bélanger, declared that the security and custody measures taken for the suspect had cost $1 million. Moreover, the chief crown prosecutor in Montreal, André Vincent, said Hell's Angels hitmen killed the two prison guards at random, just to destabilize the justice system. He added that these criminals intended to attack crown prosecutors and judges too.
I will add that André Tousignant, one of the Hell's Angels hitmen, was murdered and his body found on February 27, 1998, in the woods near Bromont.
These terrible incidents add to the problems faced by, among others, the Sûreté du Quebec in the fight against the so-called forced plantings of marijuana in farmlands across Quebec. In this regard, the Canadian Police Association stated in a press release on October 8 that the awful reality was that organized crime had reached epidemic proportions and that the police were frustrated by the lack of tools and resources to fight it.
The statistics are very revealing in measuring the scope of the problem of organized crime, regardless of its source. For example, the RCMP advises that, between 1994 and 1998, in general terms, there were 79 murders and 89 attempted murders in connection with biker gang wars in Quebec. These wars are also behind 129 cases of arson and 82 bombings.
If we look at an impact study on organized crime commissioned by the Office of the Solicitor General and released in 1998, we learn that the illicit sale of drugs in Canada provides revenues of $10 billion annually to those involved. Evaluations of the scope of the world market of illicit drugs vary between $100 billion U.S. and $500 billion U.S. Le Devoir of January 8, 1999 reported that, in Canada, in 1998, smuggling, which concerns all criminal organizations, involved primarily tobacco, alcohol and jewellery. It even reported that, in jewellery alone, the Canadian black market was estimated to be worth $400 million. All smuggling activities together are estimated to have cost the federal and provincial governments some $1.4 billion.
Crimes of an economic nature are on the same scale. To list them quickly, these include fraudulent telemarketing, aimed particularly at the elderly, stock market fraud and the fraudulent use of credit cards. According to the same source, it would appear that economic crimes cost the people of Quebec and of Canada a minimum of $5 billion annually.
This being the case, what has the Parliament of Canada done on the legislative, financial and international levels?
Let us look at the legislative aspect first of all. The government has passed four bills we feel it would be worthwhile to review briefly.
First there is the Witness Protection Act. Police forces are now in a position to provide better protection to those co-operating with them in obtaining evidence against criminal organizations.
Second, the Criminal Law Improvement Actenables the police to carry out storefront operations more easily. This enabled the RCMP to successfully carry out Operation Compote, resulting in charges against 50 people, one of them a Montreal lawyer.
The third is the anti-gang legislation passed in April 1997, the main thrust of which is inclusion in criminal law of the definition of gang.
This bill makes it a crime to take part in the activities of a gang and provides heavier penalties for those who commit crimes for a gang. It also authorizes the seizure of goods used for gangs' criminal activities.
It should noted that this legislation does not target the leaders of criminal gangs, since it is assumed that the individuals targeted are the ones who commit the crime. However, it is a well-known fact that in this type of criminal organization, the dirty jobs are often done by subordinates and that the leaders must be caught for these organizations to be broken up.
The fourth legislative measure is the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which gives police the power to conduct reverse sting operations with undercover officers.
In spite of all these legislative provisions, police forces seem unable to put an end to the activities of criminal gangs. As for the financial resources earmarked by the governments of Canada and Quebec to fight organized crime, they seem clearly inadequate. However, it must be realized that it is difficult to get a precise breakdown of all the moneys spent on the issue that we are discussing today.
Finally, at the international level, during a conference held in Montreal in 1998, the deputy commissioner of the RCMP for investigations, René Charbonneau, proposed the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to deal with drug dealers.
In light of this brief overview of organized crime in Canada, we can see that the measures and the legislation in place and the amount of money spent at this time cannot eradicate this problem. That is why the Bloc Quebecois believes it is important to examine the tools available to us to determine if they could be improved or if they could be complemented by new legislative, administrative and financial measures.
There seems to be a consensus on the urgency of passing new tougher and more explicit legislation to counter activities by criminal organizations.
Organized crime is certainly a national problem that threatens public safety. It is important that the efforts made by parliament to pass legislation that is suited to the reality faced by police match the efforts made by police in the field to uncover criminal organizations.
The federal government must show the political will to take action and must find ways to improve intelligence gathering by the police, to impose harsher sentences on members of criminal organizations and to give more teeth to its money laundering legislation.