Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Okanagan—Shuswap.
The debate has had some low points but it has had some high points tonight. As far as I am concerned, we are talking about putting personal freedoms up against our personal safety as it were. The issue of the freedoms we have in Canada is sacrosanct. Those freedoms have been fought for in two wars and other skirmishes. People have fought and died for the freedoms we have here. Before we talk about using the notwithstanding clause to do away with our own personal freedoms, we have to take a very long, hard, analytical look at the issue. We need to look at what has precipitated this focus.
First, we are talking about an allegation that a biker gang shot a reporter. That is what we are dealing with. We have to understand that there are totally different actions taken by different types of gangs. The bikers are noted for taking a very blunt instrument approach to problems as they come across them. There are aboriginal gangs, the mafia, other ethnic organizations. There are gangs of common interest, for example, the Colombian gangs around the importation and distribution of heroin.
To say that bikers represent organized crime is both unfortunate and inaccurate. It has been helpful in this terrible situation. As has already been stated, our hearts go out to Mr. Auger and the people around him. It is difficult to realize that that shooting, if indeed it is proven to be an action of a biker gang, is just one of probably thousands of potential manifestations of organized crime.
We have to realize that trying to cure the plague of organized crime with a broad action such as using the notwithstanding clause would be like using a malaria treatment for a typhoid infection. When we break our leg, we do not put our arm in a cast. We need to define the problem. We have to understand that in the House we must always stand for personal freedom of association because it equates to the issue of our personal safety in a very real way.
My final analogy would be that we could cure the common cold or a more serious flu by taking a lethal dose of arsenic. We would not have the cold or the flu anymore. We would not have to worry about having the cold or the flu. The cure may be successful, but the patient could die.
How does organized crime affect us and what do we have to do to get organized crime under control? We are aware of different situations in our society. For example, there are environmental dumps and organized crime involved in intentionally and aggressively polluting our society and our environment. We are aware of the situation with the snake heads. We are also aware of the situation of the weakening and compromising of our police forces, not through anything that our police forces are doing, but by the actions of organized crime toward them.
I will not be intimidated by the member for Waterloo—Wellington when he uses the club of political correctness so that supposedly we cannot talk about the fact that there are ethnic gangs. There are. The people most disadvantaged by those ethnic gangs are of the same ethnic group. They came to Canada to get away from that.
The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the Tamil tigers. In Canada we have an excellent outstanding community of Tamil people who came to Canada to get away from the suppression, murder and mayhem, to build a better life for themselves and their families. Unfortunately they were followed by people of the Tamil tigers who represent a national security threat to Canada, an international security threat to people around the world and who also represent organized crime in its very worst form.
Also, in terms of ethnicity or being able to identify people on the basis of a particular group, I think of the Russian gangs. We know, and this has been in the public domain, that there was an attempt to compromise politicians in this Chamber. Political contributions were made to high ranking politicians in this Chamber. To the honour and credit of those politicians, the second they found out that political contributions had been made to them, they immediately transferred the funds out of their accounts and into trust accounts. The only way this became public knowledge was that the wife of the Russian mobster tried to get the money and so it became a story.
Would other people in public life, if not in this Chamber, have fallen to the threat? Would they have fallen to the threat of compromise or embarrassment? What about financial coercion that can happen to people like ourselves in this Chamber who are charged with the responsibility of making laws to protect all Canadians? What about the threat of death to the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot and to his family, and the fact that within this parliament he has had to have a bodyguard for himself and his family? This is a very serious threat.
Canadians have to realize that although the debate we are having tonight unfortunately has had some low points, it is nonetheless absolutely vital. All Canadians, and not just this Chamber, must collectively work to protect the liberties that we have as citizens.
Do the law enforcers have sufficient resources to get the job done? Our answer is an unequivocal no. As a result of dollar cuts we have seen the disbanding of the ports police. A critical example in the issue of the ports police occurred at the time they were being wound down. The ports police were asking the Vancouver port authority about an individual it had hired who was a Chinese national based in Beijing. They wanted to know whether a security check had been done on the individual. It had not.
At about that time the Vancouver ports police were disbanded. That individual within the next couple of months brought three so-called students from the port of Dalian into the port of Vancouver. Those three so-called students had access to the port of Vancouver, to all the security, all the intelligence within the Vancouver port. And we wonder why the Vancouver port is a leaky sieve for every drug we could possibly imagine.
At exactly the same time this was going on an agreement was made with an international shipping company that Vancouver would be the first port of call. Containers would go from the port of Vancouver directly to Chicago. Do not stop, do not collect $200, do not pass go. The drugs all of a sudden went from the golden triangle to Chicago just like that as a result of the shutdown of the Vancouver ports police.
In CSIS and the RCMP, not only at the personnel level, there is a real competition as a result of the legislation that covers the evidence gathering of the police and the way in which CSIS ends up getting its information.
I suggest there are two things we need to look at long before we would ever look at the potential of shutting down our own personal rights and freedoms.
First, legislatively, we must examine and rationalize existing laws and change those laws where those laws conflict. Second, under resources, we must co-ordinate law enforcement agencies and other enforcement agencies. We must end the competition between the agencies. We must expand training and sharing of information. We must be in a position to be able to purchase contemporary equipment.
We must recognize that our response must be one of dealing with the larger issue, the broad picture. We can craft a response to enhance our personal safety and national security, but we must craft that response in a way that will stand for individual personal freedoms. We must not kill the patient with the cure.