Mr. Speaker, I say again that the Reform Party is very proud of being at the forefront of bringing these issues to the House of Commons.
We start with the police officer on the street. The RCMP cover most areas of Canada, with the exception of Newfoundland, Quebec and Ontario. The RCMP budget is $1.9 billion. Even in those other jurisdictions I just mentioned they have some jurisdiction which relates to national policing interests.
The government has trimmed $174 million from the budget in which there was no fat in the first place. We believe that spending must be prioritized to ensure only those operations proven effective in fighting the war on crime continue to receive funding. My point was that it had already reached that point when the government chose to cut a further $174 million.
The RCMP fundamentally are handcuffed at a time of fiscal restraint. It had a tremendously devastating effect not only on the morale of the RCMP officers in the province of British Columbia but also particularly on their ability to get their job done.
There were assignments shut down last fall, assignments where there had already been time and resources invested, particularly overtime. Believe it or not, it reached a point where undercover operators were told they could not even use their cell phones. There were patrol vehicles that did not have tires to get out on the highway. There were other patrol vehicles for which there was not even gasoline.
What kind of planning is this? What kind of priority is it that this Liberal government has that it would permit a situation, not just in British Columbia but very acutely in British Columbia, where even the police on the street are not given the tools to be on the street.
Reform agrees that the RCMP and all governments must be accountable. However, there cannot be this gratuitous cutting every time it runs into a situation. I have been told that in many situations the RCMP are no longer able to provide an adequate level of service to the public.
I have already released to the public a confidential RCMP report. It was originally released by the RCMP. It calls B.C. a major centre for the importation of child porn.
We know as a result of the inaction on the part of this government that British Columbia is the only jurisdiction where the simple possession of child pornography is a statute that currently cannot be enforced. It is going through a long process, as one of the junior ministers said earlier. It is going through a long process but in the meantime the clock is ticking for people who are caught in this web. The clock is ticking, their cases are being put off and we are going to reach a point where the justice system is going to say their cases have been put off for too long.
On the RCMP commercial crime unit, in December 1998 a consulting firm recommended doubling the economic crime branch's budget to $100 million because the RCMP white collar crime branch was unable to do its job.
It is the Liberal government which is tying the hands by constraining the resources available to the police on the street to be able to get their job done.
We have had promises, promises and promises. Ever since I was elected in 1993 I can recall promises about money laundering. When there is illegal and illicit activity, particularly as it relates to prostitution, drugs or any of those illegal efforts, they have to find some way of getting the money they get in from that effort back into the system so that they can reclaim it so the money is of some value. The key to organized crime is to have effective workable money laundering legislation.
The person who is currently the Deputy Prime Minister was the solicitor general. The member for Fredericton was the solicitor general. Now the member from Prince Edward Island is the solicitor general. Again he is promising on behalf of this government that we are going to have money laundering legislation. Promises, promises, promises.
The head of criminal intelligence at Interpol has said that police are losing the fight against criminals in cyberspace and will have to take giant strides to catch up on the information highway. He stated: “Drug traffickers, pedophiles and money launderers have found the Internet to be an increasingly effective tool as the number of users hits 100 million”. In my office I have an intelligence report to the RCMP about information technology and just how far ahead of the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies are those who use the system illegally and illicitly for their own purposes.
The government also saw fit to see the Regina training centre for new police officers temporarily closed. What happened to the people who were in the system, to the men and women who had decided they were going to join the RCMP and were already in the system and then boom they were out the door? That is the end of them. Now there is a fresh start.
Meanwhile a tremendous number of people in the RCMP, because of this lack of funding and the lack of ability to get the job done, are becoming increasingly frustrated. They are also reaching a voluntary retirement age.
What was the government doing in permitting the Regina training centre to be shut down? Of course it did not permit it; it simply squeezed off the resources so that the Regina training centre could not be funded.
I have been involved with the APEC inquiry by the public complaints commission in Vancouver. To date it has spent $1.3 million. That is just the money for the public complaints commission, let alone all of the lawyers who are there to protect the Prime Minister's interests. Millions and millions of dollars will go into the APEC inquiry. If the Prime Minister would simply agree to turn up and tell his version of the story, we would save millions of dollars just for that one event alone.
One other issue of particular interest to me is the Canadian Police Information Centre, CPIC. It is operated through a national police service. CPIC allows the police forces across the country to have access to criminal records.
The Canadian Police Association says “This priceless tool is in desperate need of resources to update the system”. It points out that CPIC is a 20 year old technology. The sharing of information back and forth across the country by police forces as they roll up behind a vehicle or as they accost an individual is absolutely invaluable, yet CPIC is on the verge of total collapse.
CPIC is completely bulging at the seams with information. It needs approximately $200 million to upgrade the system. Where have I heard $200 million before? I remember, $200 million is the amount of money the government is spending registering the guns of law-abiding gun owners. The irony in this is that if the government in its meagre effort were to put that information into CPIC, it would destroy CPIC by overloading it.
What is better? Do we spend $200 million to go after law-abiding citizens to register their weapons, or do we spend $200 million on a system that will track vehicles, track AWOL prisoners, track people with criminal records, track all sorts of criminal elements? Where is the best place to spend resources? Considering the way in which this government strangles the ability of our police forces to do their jobs, I suggest that the $200 million could be more intelligently reallocated.