Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to participate in the debate tonight. We are debating the issue of organized crime and what Canadians want the federal government to do to fight organized crime.
For the benefit of Canadians watching this debate, I am honoured to represent the Canadian Alliance as a recently appointed member of the subcommittee on organized crime which is currently conducting in camera hearings.
Committee members are under a gag order that the Liberal dominated committee has insisted on applying. Therefore, I will be careful not to violate that order in my remarks tonight. I will not be able to say certain things which I may have been tempted to say otherwise. I will also be careful not to point fingers at any organized groups or organizations. I will be diligent not to reveal any proceedings nor compromise the secrecy or security of the witnesses appearing before the subcommittee.
I can declare that this committee is a facade. My constituents and I and most Canadians are used to this kind of inaction by the weak Liberal government. After seven years of being in power the government has finally created this committee to investigate organized crime. Where has the government been for the last seven years? Did it not know about the magnitude of organized crime? The government struck this committee simply because we are on the eve of the next election and the Liberals want to be able to say that they have done something about organized crime. What a sham. By the time the committee submits a report it will be too late for the government to do anything about it because the Liberals will not form the government after the next election.
Tonight our brothers and sisters from Quebec are demanding that the government do something before October 6 of this year. As everyone knows, last week in Quebec there was a brutal organized crime related shooting of a journalist, the well known crime reporter Michel Auger.
I am sorry to say that this tired, weak, arrogant Liberal government that lacks vision will not be responding to Quebec's plea for immediate action against organized crime. The hearts of the people of Surrey Central go out to the people of Quebec. They have our sympathy.
I hope the committee does good work. I wish it could work fast and that we could get on with the work of combating organized crime and its effect on our society. Organized crime in Canada takes many forms and is flourishing due to mismanagement and lack of vision and action by the government.
International drug cartels use Canada as a point of transit for distribution of their illicit and life destroying products. There are many cross-border issues that bring organized crime into our country, including our close proximity to the U.S. and our lax laws.
There is no clear, precise definition of organized crime. It includes money laundering, drugs, weapons and commodities smuggling, counterfeit currency, credit cards, passports and fake identification, telemarketing, loan sharking, insurance fraud, theft, human smuggling, prostitution, extortion, home invasion and trafficking in stolen goods. These are all areas within the purview of organized crime.
Corruption in our industries and political corruption in particular are the result crime that is highly organized and aimed at achieving the corruption of our public officials and the captains of our industries.
Violence is a byproduct of organized crime. It is a trap that criminals use to get what they want.
The cost to society is huge. According to a CSIS report released in December 1998 it is estimated that the Canadian economy lost $14.8 billion to international organized crime. The underground economy is big. It is a threat to our society and a threat to civilization.
In my opinion it is almost a national emergency. It is already late. The government should have taken solid action many years ago. For many years our governments were asleep at the wheel. The various Liberal and Tory governments failed to realize and even acknowledge the problem of organized crime, let alone the action plan to counter it.
If politicians in our country deny or downplay the importance of organized crime and refuse to talk about it publicly because it may antagonize an ethnic community, or because it may upset the image of Canada or a province or a city as a crime free area, then organized crime has a licence to do what it pleases.
Despite the evidence, the infrequent official Canadian commissions into organized crime in the 1960s and 1970s all concluded that organized crime did not exist in Canada. It was not until the 1977 report of the commission of inquiry on organized crime that the concept was finally documented.
A CBC program in June 1977 provided Canadians with six hours of television about the mafia and triads in Canada, which finally brought the topic into the open for the general public. Since then, none of the Liberal or Tory governments have taken any concrete action to curb it.
Our current Prime Minister believes in a don't worry, be happy policy. Organized crime seems to be a campaign issue in the next election. The government is soft on crime in our foreign missions and is weak in control and management of every department. We regularly read about it in the newspapers these days.
For example, in British Columbia, my constituents always watch for and pay close attention to excellent new articles by Fabian Dawson of the Vancouver Province newspaper. He has been diligent in chronicling the evidence and details of incidents of abuse totalling millions of dollars in over a dozen Canadian missions abroad.
Canada had about 2,000 blank visa forms allegedly stolen from our Hong Kong office. By failing to deal with corruption in our foreign missions, the government is providing a means for criminal entry into Canada and has hung a welcome sign on Canada's back door.
Another example is 788 files containing sensitive background information on businessmen and criminals have been deleted from the computer assisted immigration processing system in order to allow undesirable people and people who otherwise would not qualify to enter Canada. The files will be altered simply to bring the criminal element back into Canada. This information is given according to Brian McAdam, a former investigator and internationally renowned expert on triads. McAdam also knows all about the so-called sidewinder investigation that has been tanked due to political pressure. What a bag of snakes that one is.
Since my election I have been working with the RCMP to pursue reports from my constituents about harassment they receive from corrupt officials in Canadian offices abroad. For example, my 1998 report to the RCMP concerning visa scams resulted in the firing of local workers at Canadian missions in New Delhi, India and Islamabad, Pakistan. Alleged bribes, stolen money, compromised interests of officials, and corruption from locally hired staff in many of our foreign missions is left unaddressed by the government.
The criminal element is now light years ahead of our law enforcement agencies. They have state of the art equipment because they have no shortages of resources. They have unlimited money at their disposal. They continue to exploit the lack of action. That is typical of the Liberal government's poor record in preventing corruption to begin with and getting to the bottom of it once detected.
The government gives terrorists and organized criminals their tax free status in Canada. About 50 so-called terrorist organizations enjoy tax free status according to CSIS. Taxpayers, through our federal government, are helping terrorists and organized criminals to send money to finance weapons acquisitions to commit terrorist activities in other countries. Even the federal ministers help them raise funds by attending their fundraisers. These things are public knowledge.
Last spring before the House rose for the summer recess I met with a group of Tamils who came to Parliament Hill. There was a huge number of people. There was a big gathering, a rally. I passed to the Prime Minister the petition they brought with them calling on the government to go forward with Canada's recent agreement to support the United Nations declaration to fight terrorism.
At about the same time Canada Post was scrambling to try to prevent a so-called vanity stamp of a Tamil tiger from being released. A stamp had already been issued to a Tamil tiger supporter even though that person was deceased before the stamp was issued which is contrary to vanity stamp guidelines. As it happened, by mismanagement of our federal government our departments were not working hand in hand. Foreign affairs could have shared with Canada Post the details or pictures of individuals being proposed for vanity stamps.
The worst criminal element already considers Canada a haven due to the lenient criminal justice system operated by the Liberals. Why is it that the Liberals only means of detecting criminal activity at our foreign missions and HRDC is through routine audits? The Liberals refuse to implement a system of self-detection and self-correction in the operation of Canadian offices in foreign lands. Indeed, they apply a cover-up mentality to internal audits that reveal serious and daunting information concerning abuses. They try to hush up and discredit information pertaining to mismanagement. The Liberals should not rely on the media or members of parliament and whistleblowers to protect Canadian interests and the loss of taxpayer dollars to the criminal element operating in foreign nations.
Finally, they seek to punish whistleblowers who come forward with information to help correct the system, save taxpayers' money, protect our sovereignty and territorial integrity. I am prepared to table in the House very shortly a private member's bill entitled the whistleblower protection act. It has been delayed due to translation problems.
On behalf of my constituents and Canadians I can recommend that to fight the effects of organized crime our federal government should have an integrated approach to the various departments such as justice, various law enforcement agencies, immigration and citizenship, foreign affairs and international trade, defence, revenue and customs, finance, transportation, telecommunications, even agriculture, fisheries and oceans because they have vessels to patrol, the RCMP, CSIS, the passport office and many other departments. This is common sense.
We should also have an integrated approach at various levels of government, the federal government, provincial and territorial governments and municipal governments. We should also have co-operation between politicians, the judiciary and bureaucrats. They should complement each other in an effort to combat organized crime. Organized crime is like a cancer and its control should be treated like a process.
We should give effective legislation to our law enforcement agencies. We should reduce the unnecessary paperwork load that keeps the hands of law enforcement agencies tied.
We need better wiretapping regulations to assist the agencies. We need to amend proceeds of crime legislation. We need to amend the Immigration Act. There is a need to review penalties for organized criminals and drug dealers. We should pass legislation with teeth, and there should be no more revolving doors.
Legislation like disclosure provisions should not be used as fishing expeditions by lawyers for the criminals. Laws pertaining to disclosure need to be amended.
We should be working closely with our foreign allies, our friends and other nations that want to combat organized crime. There should be a high level of co-operation and sharing of intelligence and resources.
Organized crime is a systemic problem rather than a bad apple scenario. We have to get tough and smart. The lazy Liberal government should either effectively lead or simply get out of the way.
In the end, today I see our young promising new team of pages. I would like to welcome them to the House of Commons and wish them all the best. Today I was the first member to speak in the House and I forgot at that time and now I am the last member to speak as well. It was really a serious issue. I believe that all members of the House contributed to this issue and we should effectively deal with organized crime in Canada.