Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member opposite for his excellent remarks. I would like, though, to observe that he concentrated mostly on trying to bring improvements to policing and he directed his remarks fairly to the justice minister and the solicitor general.
I would like to observe that the problem with organized crime and the way to really get at it I would have thought, and he only alluded to it, would be to attack the profits of organized crime. I would like to draw to the attention of the member that for years now in the House I have been campaigning to get the government to write legislation that would make non-profit organizations and charities publicly accountable for the way they raise money and spend money.
The solicitor general has had representations from international police organizations complaining that Canada has become the centre in the world for laundering money, for laundering the profits of organized crime, not to mention the money that is raised on behalf of ethnic conflicts and terrorists abroad. I would suggest to the hon. member: Would he not support pressuring the government to take positive steps toward making charities and non-profit organizations financially accountable, transparent? Does the member realize, for example, that non-profit organizations do not have to disclose anything? Even their financial information returns to the government are not available to the public, much less to journalists and MPs.
Second, I would also like to draw to the attention of the member opposite—and I take advantage of the fact that the justice minister and the solicitor general are in the House and of course are very interested in this debate—that just a few days ago I had a person in my constituency office who was engaged in import-export. He told me he is aware that 16 shipping containers left Canada for Jamaica without inspection.
The member opposite alluded to the difficulty the police authorities have to inspect shipments coming into Canada for contraband, but does he realize that there is almost no inspection of shipments going out of the country and that in fact Canada has become one of the grand opportunities for shipping anything one wants to anywhere in the world?
If we go to Nigeria today we will see stolen vehicles still with the auto dealership on the their licence plates. They do not even change the licence plates in Nigeria after a car is stolen in Canada and is shipped over to African countries.
I wonder if the member opposite would comment. Are we not really in a situation where it is not a matter of limiting the right of association and it is not just a matter of increasing the police, which is of course the favourite answer for the Canadian Alliance? Increasing the police is always the answer to everything. Is it not really something we as parliamentarians should insist upon, that all organizations out there that are engaged in moving money around should be transparent and accountable to the public at large?