Debates of Sept. 18th, 2000

Organized Crime

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when hon. members rise at this time of the evening they usually say something like it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate and that it is an important topic. Then they say some platitudinous things and sit down.

There are times, in particular in the context of the debate this evening, when one wishes that hon. members would confine their speeches to areas in which they have some knowledge. I like to remind hon. members from time to time that we are in the Parliament of Canada.

The House referred this subject matter to the justice committee for study and a report back in a timely fashion with respect to the recommendations. That is a committee on which I enjoy sitting. It is a committee that faces many of the most problematic issues of the day. This is probably one of the most problematic issues. We frankly have struggled on the justice committee to try to get a handle on this massive subject which goes to the very roots of our democratic institutions and is a real and palpable threat to our community.

One of our dilemmas was speaking to the press, making speeches and conducting our deliberations publicly. We all agreed on a self-imposed gag rule which turned out to be a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to members of the House. We did that to provide some level of confidentiality so that when witnesses came before us they could feel some confidence that what they said would be held in confidence. We in turn would get the real goods rather than the platitudinous speeches we so often hear about resources and funding, et cetera.

We felt that this level of confidentiality would in fact make our report more meaningful so that we could then move to recommendations to the House which in turn might lead to useful legislative initiatives. That is why it is my view that this call for an emergency debate is counterproductive. It will pretty well guarantee that the work of the subcommittee will be compromised or possibly even useless.

The report will be meaningless because we will not get the real goods. Witnesses will not tell us the real story. They will go off record or speak to us outside the committee room about what they really mean to say. They will not commit to writing and we will therefore be limited in what we can say in our report.

This is a classic case of parliament shooting itself in the foot partly because of hysteria. It is easy to state the problem, but it is much more difficult to apply one's mind to the resolution and to reply to the problem without lapsing into some generalized government bashing about cutting back, et cetera.

The last example of parliamentary ineptitude in this area is in my view with respect to Bill C-95, incidentally also sort of a pre-election response to a real problem. Bill C-95 is now codified in section 467 of the criminal code. It defines participation in criminal organizations. This is a classic case of legislate in haste and repent in leisure.

Arguably Bill C-95, now section 467 of the criminal code, is one of the most useless bills parliament has ever passed. The crown will not touch it because it is afraid it is not charter proof. The six elements of the offence, heaped upon a predicate offence, make the burden of proof sky high.

Everyone in the court house knows that accused x has links to organized crime, but the crown is unable to prove all six elements beyond a reasonable doubt. The police do not use it because of the ability to wiretap for in excess of a year. The time is too long. Investigations change directions over the course of a year. They question whether using this section will expose their whole case to a charter challenge. Therefore literally years of work will go out the window because they are afraid that section 467 will not withstand a charter scrutiny. The disclosure requirements expose years of police work to defence lawyers and therefore to their clients. They can get everything they want with a normal application of wiretap provisions of the criminal code and not risk wasting thousands of hours of work.

In summary, parliament, in a pre-election knee-jerk reaction to a substantive problem, gave the police and crown useless or marginally useless tools. I respectfully submit that is what this debate invites us to do once again. We apparently do not learn. As the famous Yogi Berra once said “This is déjà vu all over again”.

Compound legislative sloppiness with judicial laziness in the area of ever expanding definitions of disclosure and of relevance. Crowns have an obligation to disclose to defence that which may be relevant to the accused presenting a full defence. Since defence is under no such obligation to disclose its defence, even if it does not have one, disclosure becomes one grand fishing expedition. Crowns and police end up providing volumes and volumes of material because the judiciary will not circumscribe definitions of relevance. Therefore almost everything becomes relevant.

It has become so bad that certain jurisdictions will not share information with Canadian authorities for fear that their own investigations will be compromised by permissive Canadian courts that allow this ever-expanding definition of relevance.

People's lives are at risk. Police spend endless hours vetting disclosure binders and needless time and resources are devoted to wild goose chases. Then the defence, in an ultimate act of arrogance, will say “It is not in the right format” or “I want it tabbed and correlated”.

This is serious stuff and frankly an emergency debate is counterproductive. It is a little like bringing gasoline to a fire. It is a pathetic response by members opposite to attempt to show that they are doing something when in fact they are being counterproductive to the work of the committee.

Last week the committee spent the entire week in Vancouver. We walked the streets of east Vancouver with the police. We spent some time on the docks and were there when containers were opened. We went to the border and looked at how massive the problem is. We went to the airport and even got on an airplane with customs officers and examined all the places where one can put contraband. We were all profoundly affected by this.

[Gurmant Grewal, Reform, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hate to interrupt the hon. member who was speaking very well, but he, I and many other members are members of the subcommittee. As subcommittee members we are under gag orders. While the member is speaking on this issue he is discussing in the House what we are not supposed to discuss. If that is the case, why are certain members of the House under gag orders but not the government members?

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I am sure that anyone who is listening is listening with heightened interest to the hon. member for Scarborough East. It is a question of debate. It is not a question for the Speaker to settle. It is a question for the House. That can be settled in some other venue but not here.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had been here at the beginning of my speech he would have noticed that hon. members on the subcommittee have basically ignored the gag orders, as has the hon. member opposite, and we are being reported in the newspapers. Frankly, our confidentiality has been completely compromised. We asked that this emergency debate not occur but it has occurred.

In my view the ability of the subcommittee to produce a meaningful report with confidentiality restrictions is completely shot. I feel betrayed and disappointed that we cannot conduct the subcommittee in that matter.

To finish off, all of us were affected by the lives that we saw. The undercurrent of violence is always there and the threat to our democratic life is profound and it is real.

The subcommittee is not ready to report and this evening's debate and the compromise by members opposite of these gag orders will make our report very problematic. I am quite disappointed in the ultimate result.

This is an enormous and significant problem. It goes to the very root of our democratic way of life. People in good faith could arrive at some meaningful legislative responses and the couple of suggestions I put forward with respect to 467 and with respect to the ever-expanding definitions of relevance are areas we should seriously explore. I think that members in good faith could well arrive at some reasonable resolution of this matter and prepare a useful and a meaningful response for Canadians.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member for a clarification with regard to the subcommittee. I heard and was led to believe that the subcommittee report was under a gag order. I heard the member from the other side say that this was no longer the case. Is it my understanding that the member is now free to speak to us and the public about what went on in that subcommittee?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the committee started out by exploring the issue of confidentiality. It is clear that it is not working. It is clear from the newspaper articles printed time and time again and quotes attributed to certain members of the House who are on the subcommittee that there is no realistic possibility that we will have the confidentiality we all wish to have. As a consequence, this does not lead to the conclusion that the work of the subcommittee is without relevance.

The material that we have had and I expect we will have over the course of the next few weeks is substantive, is useful to deliberations and will help us, I hope, suggest to parliament some reasonable legislative responses which will be of assistance in responding in a reasoned and deliberate fashion so that the government may draft legislation in response.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I guess we can blame the statements of the hon. member on the late hour. He is a bit confused and, with all due respect, I will try to correct some of the things he said.

We one this side, my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois as well as the Alliance members who sit on the subcommittee, feel bound by the rules of confidentiality. I do not think that the members who have already spoken tonight or who will speak later on will break the confidentiality of the work being carried out by the subcommittee.

Second, I do not agree with the member that a more dispassionate and civilized debate, based on the insight parliamentarians should always demonstrate, could prejudice the future findings of the subcommittee.

As the leader of the Bloc Quebecois and member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie said, the subcommittee on organized crime is involved in a long term process where it will have to address a whole series of problems. What the Bloc Quebecois is asking for in the short term, by mid-October or in the near future, is that the government take very specific and time specific measures to declare illegal a number of criminal biker gangs.

I would like our hon. colleague to tell the people who are watching tonight's debate that we can act at both levels, we can uphold our oath and also exercise caution and take our responsibilities.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the hon. member opposite. I think our work is affected. I think our work is compromised by the debate and that it will be politicized. The consequence of that will be legislation, which we already have an example of in Bill C-95, which in my view was legislation in haste, repent in leisure. Bill C-95 was a knee-jerk response to a difficult problem, the result of which we are now reaping the whirlwind thereof.

My view is that the work of the committee, which I thought was going at a reasonable pace, has now been compromised. We probably will not enjoy the level of confidence from witnesses that we might otherwise have come to expect. However, I hope that will not totally compromise the work of the committee. Nevertheless, we will continue to vigilantly work at this problem. I hope we will be able to respond in a timely fashion to this issue with meaningful legislative initiatives and suggestions which the committee can put forward to parliament and parliament in turn can put forward to the government.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Just before we get to the next intervention, and without making any editorial comment, it was pointed out to me earlier that the Chair has become involved in issues relating to the in camera proceedings of committees in parliament. While everything raised in the House was, in my opinion, raised legitimately in debate, it might be wise for all of us to remember the issues that have gone on before relating to committees and in camera proceedings of committees. Again, I say that without making any editorial comment about any of the interventions by any members but we need to be mindful of our responsibilities in that regard.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I wish to inform you that I will share my 20 minutes with my colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert.

We have to look at why the Bloc Quebecois felt the need to debate this issue today. In fact, it is not just today that we have felt the need to address this issue.

The whole thing really began with the events that occurred in Montreal in 1995 when young Daniel Desrochers was killed by a bomb blast. We immediately felt the need to look at this issue.

Later on, we had Bill C-95. It is true that the Bloc Quebecois supported that bill. Members will remember that it was passed on the eve of a federal election call. In other words, it was that or nothing.

I would ask members opposite to read the comments that we made back then. We said, among other things, that the legislation would never allow the police to catch the leaders, that it would never allow it to gather evidence. The leaders are always those who call the shots. Those at the bottom of the pyramid carry out the orders and pay for those at the top, who are never caught. We said that it would be much too difficult to collect evidence against these leaders and that crown attorneys and the police would come to the same conclusion.

Then in 1996, since that legislation was not enough, the Bloc Quebecois member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, who is just behind me, introduced a private member's bill that basically sought the same objective as today's motion, namely a tougher act to fight organized crime. This is nothing new. That was in 1996.

During the election campaign in 1997, we debated this issue. We were calling for strong laws to fight organized crime, which is very active in Canada and Quebec.

In the fall of 1999 a motion to establish a sub-committee to study organized crime was unanimously passed. This did not come out of nowhere, it was once again the Bloc Quebecois that had deemed it important to study the issue with every parliamentarian from every political party gathered around the table to work out a solution. It was adopted unanimously, and the sub-committee is in the process of studying the whole issue, but I will get back to this later on.

In June 2000, the three Bloc members on the sub-committee on organized crime issued a letter in the media saying that every available tool should be considered, including the use of the notwithstanding clause if necessary. That was in June 2000. If we were talking about it at the time, it was not as a result of some incident or an attempt on the life of a journalist.

On September 1 I addressed the Canadian Police Association in Halifax. I raised the issue in my speech. I said “I think we have reached the stage where we must consider the possibility of using the notwithstanding clause should it be necessary to reach the goal we are pursuing, namely an efficient legislation to fight organized crime”. This is nothing new.

During the day, I heard the Liberals say that the decision to raise this issue today was an emotional reaction to the shooting of a Quebec journalist. This is not true. We want to debate this issue today because it is our first opportunity to do so and especially because all kinds of events took place, including that one. There were other events as well. The biker war has killed 150 so far. That is a lot of people, and it is nothing new.

Our position has not changed since 1995. There is nothing new.

What is new, however, and I have to say it, is the arrogance shown by the government which has refused to allow the House to vote on our motion, to vote on a very concrete measure forcing the government to introduce, by October 6, effective legislation to fight organized crime. On top of that, on the same day, the Minister of Justice has announced that she will propose a motion to limit debate on another bill, the one dealing with young offenders. As a Quebecer I must say that I find this rather bizarre.

On one hand we have the Young Offenders Act which works well in Quebec. Quebecers are telling the minister “Do not touch the law, it works fine. We do not need your Bill C-3”. Yet the minister has informed us that she is going to steamroller over anyone who opposes this bill and ram it through.

On the other hand Quebecers are nearly unanimous in calling for legislation with teeth to battle organized crime effectively. The government tells us “There will be no discussion”. We did manage to get some discussion tonight, at last. And the government tells us “There will be no vote either”. How can Quebecers find anything of themselves in this government?

I do not seek to win any votes with this. The Liberals are the ones looking for votes. For the Liberal government, the equation is this “What do we have to do to get more votes?” Attack 12-year-olds, maybe lower the age to 10, put them in jail. As far as major criminals are concerned, there is the Canadian charter of rights. That protects them. They have the same rights as anyone else.

I believe the Minister of Justice's thought process makes no sense. Since 1995, coming back to the subject, certain things have been done. The witness protection legislation has been amended. There is an act aimed at improving penal legislation. There is the 1997 anti-gang legislation to which I have already referred; the legislation regulating certain drugs and other substances has been changed, as has the legislation on the proceeds of crime. The criminal code has been amended in just about every possible way imaginable, as has the Narcotics Act. The $1,000 bill has even been withdrawn, something the Bloc Quebecois has been demanding for the past three or four years at least.

Today, however, there is one thing that must be pointed out. What is it? In 1995, there were 28 criminal biker gangs in Canada; in 2000, there are 35 such gangs on police files. The police have all the details on who the gang members are and so on.

They are more organized and richer than ever, and the government opposite is saying that everything is fine, that everything is under control and that there is no real need to change anything. There is especially no need to invoke the notwithstanding clause and section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is alarming. People are worried, and with good reason.

There is a real need for the sub-committee on organized crime. Everything that I have heard here represents facts that can be found in public documents. The only member who broke his oath, the only member who passed on privileged information that he received in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which is looking at the issue of crime, is one of the members of the Liberal government across the way.

I think that members opposite are looking for a way out because they are finding all this too much work. They are either lazy or irresponsible. We, however, will not back down. This evening the debate is about whether it should be a crime to belong to an association of criminals. If so, we will sit down and look for a solution up to and including using the notwithstanding clause, but that is not an end in itself.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which is studying the whole issue of organized crime, has a long road ahead of it. From it we will learn exactly what needs to be changed in the long term. There are things to do: protection of jury members, the way criminals move about across the country, the border problem. A number of things are involved.

I have taken part in many open line shows. When I say that people are anxious it is because they are, but they are also fed up with a do-nothing government. What they want is something that moves. We are no longer in consultation mode with respect to criminal organizations. We are in action mode. Something has to be done and the public expects that from a responsible party and from a government that claims to be responsible.

Today I invited the Prime Minister to assume his responsibilities as the head of the government and demanded that parliament vote on this important issue of fighting organized crime. He did not assume his responsibilities at the appropriate time. I would hope that there are people on the other side who will wake up and put the Prime Minister straight.

[Pierrette Venne, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as we now know criminal gangs of all kinds are expanding and do not hesitate to impose their law wherever they can and wherever it is profitable.

In Quebec a criminal gang like the Hell's Angels does a lot more than simply manage some trafficking. These people do not hesitate to use all means at their disposal, including of course illegal ones, to eliminate all those who put themselves in their way. Not long ago, I was against the adoption of an anti-gang legislation.

At the time I was convinced that police forces and the judicial system had all the tools they needed to stop the activities of all criminal organizations in Canada without exception and put all their members behind bars.

With passage of Bill C-95 in April of 1997, I believe like many others, that some provisions of the new act, namely those on search and seizure, penalties for gang members, electronic surveillance, explosives and crime proceeds, could actually stop the illegal activities of most of these criminal organizations. Unfortunately I now have to change my mind since I see no real improvement in the fight against the activities of these criminal gangs.

I therefore urge members of the House to seriously consider any new reasonable measure that could help to put a stop to this high level criminality. Under the present circumstances, it seems almost impossible to put these offenders behind bars because they use the current legislation to thwart the very provisions that are supposed to put them out of business.

How is it that we cannot connect certain shifty individuals with organizations like biker gangs or well-known mafia groups? And how is it that it is almost impossible to connect many criminals with violent crimes or some other offence like drug trafficking?

Obviously I would not want to see the Canadian authorities go on a purposeless witch hunt across the country. I am quite capable of seeing the difference between ordinary people and notorious criminals. I also know, however, that there are many dangerous individuals out there who are members of the 35 biker gangs known in Canada who are ready to do anything and who brag about having committed criminal acts without being bothered by the authorities.

I therefore think it is important for us to adopt new anti-gang legislation that would give us the tools to separate the good citizens from the bad criminals, members of all kinds of organizations whose ultimate aim is to commit offences that will give them enormous financial benefits and even more power.

In other countries such as the United States, France, Italy and Russia there are laws that try to improve the tools the police and judiciary have at their disposal to help them fight organized crime.

For example, our neighbours to the south have the RICO Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which targets four violations related to infiltration of businesses by gangsters. About fifty offences are clearly mentioned in that legislation and offenders are liable to a life sentence or twenty years in prison.

Contrary to what some parts of our Bill C-95 provide for, in the U.S. a person charged with an offence does not have to be convicted of the criminal activities mentioned in the RICO Act. The prosecution just has to prove that some crimes, such as extortion, theft, arson, abduction, fraud or the printing of counterfeit money, were committed.

Furthermore, with the RICO Act, contrary to what happens in Canada, there is a procedure called the reverse burden of proof. Under this procedure, once certain criminal activities have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, the accused has to demonstrate to the court that the source of his assets is legitimate.

In Quebec as everywhere else in Canada, if members of the House were to promptly pass some new anti-gang legislation, we could, from then on, require any member of a criminal gang to explain before the court where he got luxury items, such as residences, cars, jewels and so on, when his income tax return shows a very modest annual income.

Another good example is section 265 of the French criminal code, passed in February 1981. It is the only one to explicitly forbid membership in a criminal organization. It says, and I quote:

Anyone found guilty of membership in an association or involvement in an agreement designed to take one or several measures in preparation for one or several crimes against persons or property offences shall be sentenced to a period of imprisonment of five to ten years and may be denied entry.

As people say in France, it is a well-known fact that membership in a crime syndicate is illegal.

Unlike what we see in Quebec and in Canada, criminals in France do not operate openly. If they were still in existence, the Bonnot gang would not be allowed to have a bunker or use calling cards. Some of its members would not be using complimentary tickets to attend a boxing gala.

The leader of the Bloc Quebecois recently reminded us that organized crime is responsible for over 150 violent deaths. He also added that we now have a consensus in Quebec to act quickly to fight organized crime.

The Bloc Quebecois, the Quebec government, the Quebec Press Council and the Montreal Urban Community Police Department are among the groups urging the federal government to introduce harsher legislation against organized crime.

In our view, a partial suspension of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not to be excluded if it could help to achieve the desired effects, namely to quickly quash any increase in violence and the feeling that these criminals are untouchable, as they would like the population to believe.

Believe me when I say that I am not trying to score political points when I stand here in the House to demand changes to the criminal code. In fact, because the illegal sale of all kinds of drugs brings every year some $10 billion to drug traffickers, we have to deal swiftly and firmly with such criminal activities. Are members aware that some young prostitutes hit the streets as soon as 6 a.m. because they need a fix?

The work of the House sub-committee on organized crime will surely continue for some time, I hope, in spite of the remarks made a little earlier by our Liberal colleague. However, we feel it is urgent to act in order to deal swiftly and effectively with those who treat the laws with contempt.

Personally, I think it is urgent to act to quickly better equip ourselves to effectively counter organized crime because the situation is catching up with us.

In conclusion, I urge members of the House as well as government members to act as quickly as possible in order to repress more effectively all criminal gangs at work in Quebec as well as across Canada.

I feel that the shortcomings of several of our laws are major assets for organized crime and its supporters. I would even add that the strength of organized crime lies in the weakness of our actions.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate and I regret that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois has made fun of my kind words concerning Mr. René Lévesque who was a journalist and a Premier of Quebec.

How arrogant of me, an anglophone, to dare say something positive about a famous Quebecer. I truly admired Mr. Lévesque as a journalist. Mr. Lévesque understood human rights and liberties.

Mr. Lévesque must be turning in his grave at this proposal of the Bloc Quebecois to limit freedom of association. This is the very freedom Mr. Lévesque defended as a journalist and as a premier of Quebec.

How ironical. The members of the Bloc, the sovereignists want to reduce the scope of this legislation. That is impossible, for if we reduced basic rights, criminal groups would win.

I have something to say in this debate and I have waited a long time. I am one of the few people in this Chamber who is a former journalist. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that in my view, René Levesque, as one of Canada's most celebrated journalists, would indeed be turning in his grave at the very thought that his colleagues in Quebec would be proposing to lessen the rights of Quebecers, lessen the rights of Canadians as an instrument to get at criminal organizations.

I must tell a story, Mr. Speaker. In my early young days as a reporter I myself had my own encounters with organized crime. I have great sympathy for the Quebec journalist who found himself wounded severely in the recent incident that has led to this debate. When I started out at the Hamilton Spectator many years ago as a police reporter, the city editor at the time really admired the way I seemed to be able to get information out of anyone. At that time I was only a reporter for two years.

Hamilton has had a Mafia problem for some time and I imagine it still has a Mafia problem now. It certainly did then. There was a particularly notorious Mafioso by the name of Johnny Papalia who lived in town. A couple of years ago he was gunned down in a contract killing. Even for 20 years he has obviously had quite a reputation in his own organization and it cost him in the end. He was notorious and he used to operate from a little company called Monarch Vending which is on Railway Street, a little blind street in Hamilton.

What was happening was the Globe and Mail was running a series of exposés on the Mafia and the city editor in Hamilton wanted to match the exposé. The exposés were about a different Mafia leader altogether, but he suggested I go down and get Johnny Papalia's reaction. No one had ever interviewed Johnny Papalia. He was notorious. He was a tough guy.

Anyway, I dutifully decided to take a taxi rather than my own car because of course even journalists do worry about these things and I did not want Johnny Papalia's friends to get my licence number. I took a cab down to 10 Railway Street. The cabbie said to me “You are going to see Johnny Pops”. I said, “Well, yes”. The cab dropped me off. He was kind of interested. He drove down to the end of the street and backed up into a driveway. He wanted to see whether I would come out.

I went into Monarch Vending and there was this great big guy. There were lots of thugs around in those days and they looked like thugs. I said I wanted to see Johnny Papalia and they were so amazed. This Mafioso guy came out. He was a tough looking hombre and he said “I will tell you once, take off. How dare you come here”. I said, “Look, Mr. Papalia, I just came here to get your side of this article in the Globe and Mail ”. He raged at me and I backed up and out of the door and down the driveway and past his Cadillac. He had a Cadillac in the driveway. I got a little mad myself and I said “All right, if you do not want the damned story” and I took the newspaper article and spiked it on the radio aerial of his Cadillac. I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for some time afterwards I did look under my car in case there was a bomb or any other thing but there was not.

In those days, I think generally speaking, there was an unwritten rule. That unwritten rule was that one did not intimidate, harass or threaten the life of journalists.

Why we are having this debate tonight and why it is so very important is that organized crime has broken that code. They have attacked a journalist in the course of his duty. I have great admiration for the Quebec reporter. I am glad he survived but we should all be desperately concerned when an event like this occurs.

I think it is absolutely right for this parliament to go on the attack against this kind of threat but I caution everyone that there is no journalist in this country, I am sure, who would really want to sacrifice our fundamental liberties just because one or two of us get killed because that is what does happen. I lament the Bloc Quebecois. They do not realize it is the same tradition of journalism in Quebec as it is in the rest of Canada. Nothing is different.

Quebec journalists follow the same tradition of defending basic rights.

You do not sacrifice a fundamental right like freedom of association because a journalist has been attacked, but what parliament must do is it must make these organizations pay. The only way you can make organizations like this pay when they attack journalists, when they attack politicians, or when they attack justice officials, is to take business away from them.

I proposed earlier, Mr. Speaker, that I really do think that the government has been going at this problem in bits and pieces. In fact over the last five or six years the government has failed to comprehensively address the ways in which organized crime is making money.

I have followed this debate this entire evening and a lot of the debate has focused on increasing policing. There were some very good comments about taking the ports police away. I do believe that our open ports and the ability to export any kind of contraband out of Canada is one of the major things that is fueling profits for organized crime. That has been a very good suggestion.

But just adding police is not the answer. As I alluded to earlier, we have to stop the ability of organized crime to make money in Canada and to launder money in Canada, and to engage in easy cross-border transportation, both in money, and information is another thing, and contraband. We have not done very well there.

We have had an opportunity in the past and we have not exploited it. We need to go after, as I mentioned, non-profit organizations and charities. I know this sounds preposterous that I should be bringing charities into a debate about organized crime, but I can assure the members opposite that this is very, very serious. The charity industry is over $100 billion.

I was going through my pile of correspondence as I was listening to the debate. I had a number of annual reports from major charities. I will not name them because it is a little hard on them in the context of this particular debate, but some of these charities were very prominent charities. They sent their annual reports out and there is no financial detail. There is no audited financial statement.

Major charities are operating with no transparency and it is an absolute invitation to organized crime. One can set up a charity anywhere in this country and there is no requirement for them to report. So the charities have become famous, I think worldwide, Mr. Speaker, for the ability for organized crime or ethnic organizations to finance terrorism abroad, you name it. They are able to finance everything through the various charitable non-profit organizations in this country.

I have complained about this issue many times. I regret that the government has been slow to respond, but I regret also that I have had very little support from the opposition benches. The opposition benches are constantly looking for opportunities to embarrass the government, and when a backbench MP comes along with something that really is central to solving the organized crime problem—or not solving, nothing solves it—but making it costly for organized crime to operate, I just have not had the support. I regret that because I really think that many of the members on the opposite side are very sincere in what they try to do. I think that by and large this debate, except where it entered into the delicate ground of interfering with our fundamental liberties, has been well aimed.

I have to be a little careful because I do not want to cast aspersions on the justice minister and the solicitor general who very patiently took part in this entire debate and I hope receive some very good suggestions, but the responses from the justice minister and the solicitor general are still partial. No one seems to recognize or appreciate that the Internet and electronic communications and the global marketplace are a boon to organized crime, an absolute boon to organized crime. What we really have to do is have an open debate.

It was quite a revelation to me to know that the subcommittee on organized crime was having in camera discussions. That is pretty useless, I want you to know, Mr. Speaker, because I am a person who did not happen to be on that committee. I can tell you that I would have had some input in that committee. I can tell you that it was one of the places where I would have liked to have had some input.

I learned tonight the subcommittee received a submission to which the justice minister alluded. It was a consultation paper on the intimidation of key players in the criminal justice system. This consultation paper arose from a survey that was done in 1998 following a court case involving the Hell's Angels in which Quebecers were asked whether or not they feared reprisals if they did jury duty on a case involving organized crime like the Hell's Angels.

I think 81% of them said they feared intimidation, so the justice department issued a consultation paper which the subcommittee on organized crime is supposedly considering. It seeks laws, regulations or penalties specifically aimed at intimidation of people in the criminal justice system like judges, juries, policemen and prison guards, but they left out politicians and journalists.

This whole way in which we try to control the bad side of society, the way that we try to get control over the negative, shadowy forces that would steal, that would kill, is through our politicians and journalists as well as through our criminal justice system. I would submit that it is more so with our politicians and journalists. The journalists are the ones who write the stories and put their lives in danger, and the politicians are the ones who act upon those stories and pass legislation.

There is ample opportunity for organized crime to get at politicians. There is the instrument of blackmail. I believe that there have even been instances where politicians in this parliament have been physically threatened. That is possible. One can have one's family physically threatened. I am not talking about the Quebecois member. I think the problem is a bit more general than that.

We cannot allow that to happen. If there is to be a consultation paper that seeks to put in place new penalties or new laws preventing the intimidation of people in the criminal justice system, then those penalties, those new innovations, those initiatives, should apply also to journalists and politicians because there is no doubt about the seriousness of what has occurred.

I welcome this debate. I am just a little saddened that members of the Bloc Quebecois do not appreciate that they allow the criminals to stampede the politicians into passing laws. That is what they are proposing, the notwithstanding clause to circumvent the constitution so that in one particular instance somebody can be arrested because they are wearing a Hell's Angels jacket. That is unacceptable, because if we had a law like that it could be used by another government against a separatist party or against any other kind of organization, the flavour of the time shall we say, decided was a threat to peace, order and good government.

We must never allow that to happen. The final analysis is that when we allow criminals to diminish our fundamental rights and freedoms then crime wins.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his words tonight. I certainly understand what he is saying, particularly with respect to organized crime. When we hit the pocketbook, touch the financial resources, it will hurt and have an effect. There is no doubt about that.

I am really concerned that the member alluded to an incident where a journalist was shot and that there was a knee-jerk reaction. Over just a short period of time over 150 people in Quebec alone have died at the hands of organized criminals. These include not only gang members but also innocent bystanders. That is just in Quebec. That is not to mention what has happened across the country in many other areas where people have died. That is not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of young people, the most vulnerable, who have died of drug overdoses, who have been hired by organized crime.

There is violence galore. I do not think we can ignore the fact that violence is prevalent and that people are dying. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to one incident. When is somebody going to wake up, take the bull by the horns and say that is enough?

Maybe it will infringe on the rights to belong to an organization, providing that organization is definitely connected to all these problems. There might be even another one and another one. I really think that the hon. member is missing the boat by simply saying that taking away all the methods of earning money will be the answer. I think it has to be a combination. We have to start acting like we mean business. Maybe it would be a drastic measure.

It is true that we want to protect the liberties we are used to, the things to which we are so accustomed. All of us want that. It was not the politicians. It was not Mr. Trudeau and the charter of rights that brought in all these liberties. It was the soldier over many years of protecting the country. That is what brought us all these freedoms.

I would suggest a lot of these soldiers who died in wars to protect the freedoms we have would be turning over in their graves knowing how many people are being pulverized by these criminals. Sooner or later we must get a little stronger in our thinking, other than what can we do to break the backs of their economy. That is part of it, but in the meantime there will be an awful lot of violence to prevent that. What are we to do about that combined complex problem?

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, so we invoke the notwithstanding clause and we pass legislation that makes it a crime to belong to Hell's Angels, for example. What if Hell's Angels organizers or the real Hell's Angels grab some kids off the street and say “Wear this jacket with Hell's Angels on it?” The kid is going to wear the jacket because he is going to know that if he does not wear the jacket he is going to be beat up and then he is going to be arrested by the police.

Do you not see, Mr. Speaker, how simple it is to destroy that very principle? We are talking about sophisticated criminals. I suspect, as a matter of fact I am sure, that the head of the Hell's Angels is somewhere over in Taiwan or out in the Indian Ocean. Organized crime is a vast octopus even though the all powerful President Clinton cannot get a grip on where the leadership is coming from. It is just like a bad James Bond novel. They will be clever enough that they will embarrass this government and they will embarrass this country so much that if we actually restrict the liberties they will make sure the people we grab will be the innocent.

What I ask the member opposite, who cannot reply because it will not be his turn, is what he will do then if we circumvent the constitution, if we erode a fundamental right and we put innocent people in jail, and the Hell's Angels and the other motorcycle gangs go on in their lovely gun running, drug businesses as before? It is not the answer. It is the abyss and we must not step into it.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to address the debate tonight. I appreciate the hon. member across the way for staying as late as it is and hearing what I have to say. At least we have one over there. If it is all the same, I will go by the rule of Ecclesiastes where it says “The heart of the wise looks to the right and the heart of a fool to the left”. I am going to look directly at you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to start by saying that the hon. member is talking about some very hypothetical situations: what if, what if, and I can understand why he would do that. There is a lot of situations that are rather hypothetical in what would happen. Nevertheless, it is not addressing the problem.

I am sure I will get a reaction from the hon. member by making a couple of comments. There is no doubt in my mind, I say unequivocally, that the charter of rights has set up many barriers to accomplishing good judicial answers in the country.

I concur with the Quebec minister of public security that the federal anti-gang laws are too complex. They are costly and timid in stopping the province's brazen motorcyle gangs. It is a charter of rights involving freedom of association. It should be temporarily suspended in cases of suspected organized criminal activity. I am sick and tired of criminal rights superseding the collective rights of law-abiding citizens. I think on this point Canadians would agree.

I refer to Supreme Court Judge L'Heureux-Dubé's 1997 comments in response to the Feeney case. In her dissenting opinion Justice L'Heureux-Dubé suggested that now that the charter was 15 years old it might be time to reassess the balance courts construct between protecting the individual rights of the accused and preserving society's capacity to protect its most vulnerable members and to expose the truth.

In terms of the most vulnerable members I think of the young people. I think of the number of funerals I attended of students who died from drugs when I taught high school for 22 years back in the eighties and early nineties. It was all part of this problem.

It is high time we opened up the debate the judge is suggesting. We should determine whether or not the charter of rights should be extended to those convicted of committing a crime. I am confident that the charter of rights should be reserved for law-abiding citizens.

The basic rights belong there: the right to a fair trial with an assumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to an attorney. All basic rights have to be there but once convicted how far will we allow the charter to apply to those convicted people? It constantly puts up barriers and has created the very victims groups the other hon. member mentioned several times tonight.

The victims groups exist because they are not happy with the justice that has been prevailing in the land. CAVEAT, CRY and all such organizations which represent thousands and thousands of Canadians did not organize because they were happy with the justice system. It was just the opposite.

The next item that bothers me is the ongoing rhetoric about how we have given the tools to the police and done all the wonderful things we need to do in order to help them fight crime.

I have a press release of September 15, 2000, about three days ago. Its leading comments are “Less Talk, More Action, Says Canadian Police Association”. It continues:

“This week's shooting of Montreal journalist Michel Auger is yet another example of the scourge of organized crime in our communities”, says David Griffin, Executive Officer of the 30,000 member Canadian Police Association. “While organized criminals conduct their activities with virtual immunity, police are increasingly frustrated and thwarted in their efforts to fight back, due to weak laws, lack of tools, and a woeful lack of the necessary resources”.

It is their press release. It is not mine yet I have heard rhetoric all night about what wonderful things they have done. According to this press release it is nonsense. It continues:

“Canada has gained third world status as a haven for organized criminals,” said Griffin. “The attack on Mr. Auger is just the latest example of the violence and intimidation tactics used by these gangsters.

Our democratic institutions are being threatened by the influence of global criminals. Two Quebec prison guards were murdered, a Member of Parliament and his family were under police protection last fall after the member spoke out, and now a member of the media has been gunned down in an apparent attempt to muzzle his voice. While politicians at all levels continue to point fingers in other directions or promise to do more, the reality on the frontlines is that we are barely fielding a team”.

I repeat, this is the Canadian Police Association. It is not the Canadian Alliance saying that. It says that this government constantly insists that it has given all the tools necessary to do the job. This press release of three days ago is very contradictory to those comments.

Despite the national and international attention that has been drawn to this issue, the Government of Canada has done little to bolster enforcement in order to keep pace with sophisticated organized criminals...We have weak laws, weak budgets, weak technology and little support. Our front-line officers are extremely demoralized. On the other hand, organized criminals have billions of dollars at their disposal and are literally banking on the lack of enforcement resources to track their movements.

Enough of the rhetoric about how much we are doing to help our police force get the job done that they need to do. Let us take a look at the latest report of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada which stated, as reported in the Hill Times :

Virtually every major criminal group in the world is active in this country.

The article goes on to state:

In 1998, RCMP Superintendent Ben Soave, who heads the Toronto-based organized crime squad, warned organized crime groups are trying to corrupt politicians and police with bribes and blackmail. They are a threat to our national security.

In other countries this statement would have been sufficient to appoint a royal commission in order to find a solution to this dangerous problem. Sadly, not in Canada where politicians sit idly by.

Another government organization is saying that this government continually insists that we are happy with the situation. Those are their words, not mine. This is their press release. It is not mine. Hon. members can point their fingers at this party all they want to.

Hon. members should hear this factual story from the Ottawa Sun of April 25, 1999. I will read it to them.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began tracking the 30-metre pleasure yacht named the Blue Dawn in October of 1997, when it sailed east across the Atlantic Ocean from the quaint Nova Scotia town of Lunenburg...More than 150 officers had worked thousands of extra hours on the investigation, which would become the largest drug bust in British Columbia history. But as the Blue Dawn waited some 400 miles off the B.C. coast in the chilly November air to transfer its treasure of Pakistani hashish onto a smaller vessel, the long and complex RCMP drug sting suddenly hit a snag...we had to tell our officers that they couldn't be paid. There was just no money around to do it. We told them they could complete the operation, but they wouldn't be paid for it...to their credit, (the officers) decided to complete the operation without pay...Had the officers decided not to proceed with the bust, however, nearly 15 tonnes of hash destined for the large cities of eastern Canada would have entered the country...the Blue Dawn was not the first time officers were forced to donate their time. And I don't know how much longer their dedication to busting criminals will carry thus through this financial crisis we're under.

We are asking them to do that for nothing? That is a fact. Check it out. Do not take my word for it. Ask the police about the Blue Dawn, the big sting and all the donated time by police because we have not got the money to pay for it. It is strange that we have money for all kinds of silliness. When we look at the public accounts and the way they spend money on that side of the House, it drives us nuts, yet they cannot afford to pay the police in a major sting operation. What is going on?

To talk about all these problems is not any good without suggesting some solutions. Let me try.

First, monitor the implementation and effectiveness of the anti-gang legislation enacted in 1997. I think there was one conviction but I understand that through plea bargaining that was thrown out; one conviction since 1997.

Second, review the effectiveness of the proceeds of crime legislation.

Third, improve the ability of the police to investigate money laundering and introduce legislation creating new financial reporting requirements for banks regarding suspicious transactions.

Fourth, significantly increase penalties for drug smuggling and trafficking.

Fifth, amend the criminal code to include a penalty for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, for people who use minors for drug trafficking and for prostitution. It is high time we socked it to them. Instead we do nothing.

Sixth, increase surveillance and controls along the borders, at ports in Canadian waters and abroad. I stood at the Canadian port in Port Erie and asked the guards what were in the boats that were coming across. They said they did not know for sure. I asked if they had any idea what they might be. They said that if it was one level, it was probably cigarettes. At another level it was probably booze. At another level it was probably people. If it was at another level it could be guns. Who stops them? Nobody.

I watched the boats go the other way to the U.S. Guess what? They did not get half way across the water. There was a patrol that stopped all of them.

Seventh, increase the sophisticated technology to better detect drug shipments. Do that.

Eighth, create a special investigative and tactical unit comprised of RCMP, Customs Canada, national defence, CSIS, solely used for combatting organized crime. Do those things.

The government has been in for seven years. Organized crime has been here longer than that. It has done nothing except implement the anti-gang thing in 1997 which did not accomplish a thing. That is what it has done.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Absolutely rubbish.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

The member says “absolutely rubbish”. The government has done nothing else.

I could go on and on with stories from prison guards who talk about those who have been shot at or who are being threatened. Their families are being threatened in their homes and they are afraid to react against the gang activities in the penitentiaries because of the dangers it imposes upon their families.

We put up a drug detector machine, a fancy several million dollar machine. I forget what it is called but it has a name. They put that machine in the penitentiaries. I have been to practically every penitentiary in the country and to many of them several times, visiting of course. I have always insisted that I should go through this drug machine. I am very fortunate that I passed all the time. I asked who was tested by the machine. I was told that the guards, the people who worked there, the volunteers and the lawyers who work for the inmates were not, but the visitors were. Guess what they told me at one penitentiary when I asked what it did when drugs were detected on a visitor? The answer was “Go home, clean up and try again tomorrow”.

What kind of regulation is that? That is what they are telling me in the penitentiaries. Then we wonder why drugs are so heavily prevalent in these penitentiaries. There are more drugs inside the prisons than there are on the streets.

I am really tired of the constant rhetoric that comes from that side of the House about the wonderful things that the government has done. Yet the problem goes on and on. One member would say “rubbish, it does not”. Talk to all the victims of people who have died from these kinds of activities. There are thousands of them. It is not so easy to see when the only thing the member does in the House is jump from seat to seat to get camera attention.

It is late and I do not want to keep us here any longer than we have to. There is one more thing that I want to say. I want to quote from an article in the Ottawa Citizen from RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray who retired not too long ago. He said:

Organized crime in Canada is now so pervasive that police have been reduced to putting out isolated fires in a blazing underworld economy. Canada is particularly vulnerable to drug trafficking, the principal source of revenue for most organized crime groups, according to the Drug Analysis Section of the RCMP. Smugglers are attracted to Canada because of the low risk of arrest due to limited police resources that have stymied investigations, relatively light penalties and our sprawling, largely unmonitored borders.

All these comments are coming from police commissioners, the police association, prison guards, victims, the cries from Quebec and the number of lives that are lost.

Can somebody suggest to me that the charter is not a barrier to good justice in this land? I would suggest that it is time to review that statement. It is time to open up that debate. Let us not protect this document to the point that it allows all of these problems to continue to exist. Let us heed the words of the supreme court justice who said it is time to review this after 15 years. Is it having the effect of its intent when it was brought into being? I am not going to attack it and I do not think the hon. member across the way would attack it, but I think he would be willing to discuss it and see if we can improve it. At no time do I believe for a moment that Prime Minister Trudeau intended this document to be a political protective paper for the worst criminals of all kind. I do not think he intended that, but it is happening.

The provinces do their best. Alberta passed legislation to take 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old prostitutes off the streets of its cities. Not to arrest them, not to convict them, but to get them off the streets and try to help them. A complaint was laid and it was determined by our courts that under the charter of rights it is unconstitutional to do that. If my hon. colleague and I were driving down the street and we saw an 11 year old girl on the street prostituting and we did not try to help her get off the street, I would be disgusted with him and I am sure he would be disgusted with me. That is what they are trying to do and we are letting a document such as this stop that kind of activity. That cannot continue.

We will let the courts decide that it is okay for a 56 year old man to own, possess and enjoy child pornography. It was only going to be a temporary thing. It would not take long. We are still waiting two years later. Why? Because of one document.

I love Canada. I love our freedoms. I have the greatest respect and regard for the soldiers who died to build and protect those freedoms. If we are ever going to lose any freedoms, it is because of our failure as parliamentarians to implement the most elemental duty that we have, and that is to provide protection for the safety of our citizens. We had better start doing it.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, It is a pleasure to actually stand here in the House and represent them and have them formally named each time that I do stand.

The member opposite, the member for Wild Rose, spoke excellently. I think he came up with a number of very good suggestions on how we could stiffen the laws to get at organized crime. However, I invite him to review his own words in Hansard tomorrow and he will find that nowhere in his speech did he actually make an argument for using the notwithstanding clause to adjust the constitution or the charter of rights to limit association, to make it a crime to join motorcycle gangs.

The closest he came to a criticism of the constitution was when he brought up the issue, as he alluded to it before, of the child prostitution legislation that was attempted in Alberta. I am absolutely on the same wavelength with him there. I think it was good legislation and it should have survived but it was overruled by an interpretation of a lower court.

I think if he really thinks about it, the member for Wild Rose will realize that the problem is not the constitution. The problem is the interpretation of the constitution that is taken in varying forms by the courts.

I would like to get his reaction here because we are having a debate in which we have an opportunity to put forward novel suggestions. I think one of the problems that has bedevilled us as a society since the constitution came in and since the charter of rights came in is that there have been interpretations of the charter that we as parliamentarians know, from our own feelings, from contacts with our constituents and from our own sense of the nation, are sometimes not right.

What I would suggest to the House is that one of the reasons why we get this feeling is that we are never invited to appear before the courts for these interpretations. We make the laws but we never have the opportunity to explain to the courts what we mean by the laws. We never get to go before those courts.

I would ask the member to respond to this right now. When there is a challenge before the supreme court, the justice department sends lawyers. I am not always sure that our justice department can advocate for the laws we pass in the way that I would wish, as indeed, Mr. Speaker, in our debates here, I often find myself at odds with our own justice department. Would he think that it might be a good innovation, a good initiative, if we brought more lawyers into the House of Commons so the House of Commons lawyers could advocate on behalf of parliamentarians? It is this place, parliament, that creates the laws, not government. It is a myth that it is government. Government brings them in and they go forward but in the end it is the vote of the parliamentarians here that determines the legislation.

The courts never hear the opposition arguments when legislation goes through. They only see one side. Unfortunately, as it stands now only the government advocates on issues pertaining to interpretations of the charter.

I would suggest that the member opposite and all opposition parties should get on side and pressure the government, pressure the Board of Internal Economy and pressure the Speaker to create more lawyers in this House to sit at that table who would act for we parliamentarians and advocate for the interpretations of the legislation for us on all sides of the House.

Then perhaps someone can say that maybe the charter should not apply to children in this circumstance. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, if I had an opportunity to plead before that court, I would say that my intention as a parliamentarian is never to put children at risk in that context. The charter was never intended to do that.

However, I cannot do it alone. We need to have another voice in interpreting the charter. It is not the words that are the problem. If you start monkeying around with the words, Mr. Speaker, you will get into trouble. That is exactly what Hitler and Stalin did. They limited the right of association and that is how we got the night of the long knives or the night of the broken glass. That is how we got the genocides in the Ukraine. We cannot do that. We cannot limit the words of the constitution but we can certainly try to get parliament represented when interpretations of the constitution are going forward in the courts.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to take notes but that was a fairly lengthy thing to which I do not know how to respond.

I would like to add to the hon. member's words about what happened in terms of Stalin and Hitler. I also remember the registration and confiscation of guns along with all the rest of it.

There are a couple of things the member said that really frightened me. The first one was that we need more lawyers in this place. That is a little frightening to me. I know what he is talking about. He is not talking about sitting in the seats there but about sitting in the lawyers pew. I do not think that would work.

I am sure the hon. member has gone through creating a private member's bill. I have gone through several of them now and I find it really frustrating when the bill keeps coming back and we have to do more work or when it does not meet the charter test. I do not have the expertise on just exactly how to word a bill in order to make it pass the test. We say to those who are supposed to be able to do that “This is what I mean. This is what we want to happen with this bill”, but very few bills make it. In fact, how many pieces of legislation have been rejected at the level we now have available to us because we feared it would not meet the charter test?

I would like to visit the courts with the hon. member some time on a bill that we can agree on—and I am sure we might find one—and say “This is the intent of the bill. What is wrong with it? What can we do to prevent it from ever being challenged?” We cannot do that. It cannot happen.

It was a lower court that made the decision in the pornography case but it is now before the Supreme Court of Canada. We keep saying “Let the process work”. How many times do we have to continue to do this to protect those people who are a menace to our society?

I think Canadians are really tired of that procedure and we need to look at better ways of delivering justice. We need to stop the barriers in the charter that have allowed this to happen. I do think it is a good one to debate but we could not debate it in this place without being called an extremist, a racist or all the other garbage that keeps flowing over. The Liberals do not know how to debate. They only know how to call names. When will that ever end? I doubt if it ever will. As long as we have fools in here it will never happen.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member very well. I have travelled with him to a number of prisons. I know the hon. member was contacted by the Metis Association with regard to gang controlled child prostitution in Winnipeg. I would like him to comment a little bit on that.

We heard a comment a few minutes ago from the other side about judges interpreting the charter. If judges are allowed to interpret the charter is there not something weak in the charter? Should it not be up to us as parliamentarians, particularly the government, to close any loopholes in interpreting the charter? Why should the charter be open to interpretation?

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I find it amazing that the basic ideas and principles behind establishing a document of rights is necessary to be open to interpretation. I think that is absolutely a waste of time. I do think that the intent of any document should be clearly illustrated. If it does take better wording, then let us do it. However, I do not think we have any trouble with the intent of the legislation. We should go at it and do it in that fashion but it is very difficult in a partisan setting.

As far as the Winnipeg problem goes, it is a shame to see the number of under age, under 18 gangs running around the city wearing jackets to be identified. They are responsible for home invasions and causing a lot of grief but our hands are tied and they should not be. We could do something about it but we need the courage and the fortitude to do it, which is something this government is lacking.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand there will be only one other speaker after me in this debate, barring any last minute changes. I am saying this for the benefit of our security people, those who work in the cafeteria and our pages, who just started working today. Surely they will find it was a rather hard day's work. I want to assure them that it is unusual for the House to sit until 12.30 a.m. on a Monday night.

I did not want to miss tonight's debate even though today's legislative menu was rather substantial. In 1996, as the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, I was the first member to introduce an anti-gang bill. The government used 80% of my bill in its own legislation.

I mention this because in 1997 we were all convinced that we were doing the right thing. It was not a partisan debate. The Canadian Alliance, the Progressive Conservative Party, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois and the government acted quickly to pass that bill. We did it in two days, which is rather exceptional.

There was a climate of terror at that time. In 1995, in my riding of Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, a car bombing had claimed the life of an 11-year old boy, Daniel Desrochers. At the same time, biker gangs were trying out a new strategy based on intimidation of the people within our justice system. Some people had been shot to death in our prisons. More importantly, for the first time in our history, biker gangs were using explosives on a large scale.

That is why Bill C-95 contained nine very important provisions. The first one—I will list them rapidly—was to create a “criminal organization offence”, which we included in the criminal code, whereby profiting from a crime or committing a crime for the benefit of a criminal organization was a new offence punishable by a 14 year sentence. Possession of an explosive substance was also liable to imprisonment for 14 years. There was an obligation for the solicitor general to report to the House once a year.

There was another extremely important provision which I will have the opportunity to come back to: the possibility of obtaining from a judge wiretapping warrants for more than three months, from three months to one year, in fact. This provision was welcomed by the judiciary community as it hampered investigations to have a warrant for one or two months and then to have to go to court to ask for an extension. At the time, the legislator was extremely well-advised to allow wiretapping warrants for one year.

There were also more generous provisions concerning searches and, of course, allowing a judge to subpoena individuals where there were reasonable grounds to fear that they would commit a crime, to issue probation orders, and to order them to keep the peace.

Bill C-95 was good legislation. I am convinced that, as parliamentarians, we went as far as we could in view of the information we had.

Bill C-95 contained another feature, that is to not allow a criminal sentenced for gangsterism to be paroled before having served half of his sentence.

What I would like to remind the House tonight is that we must talk about these issues with serenity, of course. We must talk about these issues on the basis of all the information available to us and we must do so in a non partisan manner. We in the Bloc Quebecois are all doing this and I am convinced that our government colleagues are doing the same thing because the lives of our fellow citizens are at stake. And it is more fundamentally the way in which we want to see democracy.

It is not possible for us to be members of parliament while outside, in communities, there are people who get away with bearing the colours of the Hell's Angels, the Rock Machine or any another criminal biker gang, and these people can make terror reign in communities. It is not possible that, year after year in February, we pass a budget, parliament's budget, and that, parallel to this an underground economy is put in place.

I remind hon. members that the underground economy, the activity of the underworld on the Canadian territory, is estimated at $200 billion.

I want the debate to proceed with serenity as much as I am convinced that we must act quickly. We do not have much time in front of us.

In 1997 when we passed the anti-gang bill we took stock of the state of the underworld at the time and especially the criminalized biker gangs. Everything has changed since then. As parliamentarians, we should know that as long as we do not outlaw criminalized biker gangs, our legislation will have an extremely limited impact.

Why is that? It is because the underworld is very dynamic, well informed, extremely rich and powerful. We should be talking about the way the underworld operates in the year 2000.

Bill C-95, which created a new offence concerning gangs activities, prescribed three things. The organization had to have at least five members. It had to have committed five crimes punishable by five years in prison, under the criminal code, in the last five years. What did the underworld, the Hell's Angels and other criminalized biker gangs do to circumvent this new provision? They made sure those who committed offences associated with gangs by planting bombs, killing people and benefiting from the underground economy did not have a criminal record. People who did not have a criminal record or previous sentences under the terms of section 487.1 could not be brought to court.

As parliamentarians, we should give serious thought to the fact that since 1997 not a single crown attorney in Winnipeg, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick or Newfoundland has succeeded in getting a conviction under that provision. And that is not because of a lack of skill, hard work or knowledge of the law.

None of the attorneys was able to lay a charge so there was no trial in Canada and therefore no sentence, since no charges were laid. This is the worst part about the way organized crime operates in the new millennium.

It does not mean we should throw in the towel and capitulate. Fatalism would then be our worse enemy. It means we must seriously consider invoking the notwithstanding clause.

Why should we consider using this clause? Because we have considerably amended the laws over time. We amended the criminal code at least eight times. And they were not minor cosmetic changes or marginal amendments. We substantially amended the criminal code and therefore our criminal system.

We amended the Witness Protection Act to ensure better protection for informants. We know quite well that, in the area of criminal activity it is impossible to complete an investigation without some kind of co-operation, without the help of informants.

We modified the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act to withdraw the $1,000 bill from circulation. If we were to ask police officers or those present in the House how many have a $1,000 bill in their pocket, very few would raise their hand. Casinos, travel agencies and people doing cross-border trade were compelled to report suspicious transactions.

On eight occasions extremely significant amendments were made to the criminal code. Despite all that, organized crime has never been as powerful as it is now. This is why it would be very unwise to refuse to consider invoking the notwithstanding clause.

I want to remind hon. members that the notwithstanding clause is a legitimate one. We are not breaking the law and we are not violating the constitution by using the notwithstanding clause. Under the Constitution Act, 1982, we can restrict some freedoms that are considered fundamental, but not just any one of them.

For instance, we could not restrict the judiciary guarantees provided for in sections 7 to 14 of the act; we could not limit language rights nor mobility rights. But very conveniently it was provided in the Constitution Act, 1982, that under certain extreme circumstances we could limit freedom of association.

This is precisely what this is all about. The Bloc Quebecois, the Fédération prpofessionnelle des journalistes du Québec, as well as other intermediary bodies asked the government to create an offence of association. Thus, membership in a gang such as the Hell's Angels, the Rock Machines or any other criminal group known to the RCMP or CSIS would be forbidden by the legislation. Membership in those gangs, working for them or acting in such a way as to making them richer and benefiting from membership in those gangs would be forbidden.

What is the objective of the legislation? It is not merely gang membership. If members of the Hell's Angels, the Rock Machine, the Bandidos or any of the others joined together to do sports or some other activity, as legislators we would not be concerned.

We know very well that these people are joined together for illegal gains. What must be banned is membership in these biker gangs, linked with illegal gains, and thus with the acquisition of property, and of course the laundering of the proceeds of crime. I do not believe that there is anything excessive in this.

At any rate, the notwithstanding clause needs to be renewed after five years of use. We could very well use the notwithstanding clause. I sincerely believe that the bill must define the gangs currently referred to.

“In particular” could very easily be added, along the lines of section 15 of the 1982 Constitution Act. Some may say “Yes, but if an explicit reference is made in a bill to the Hell's Angels, the Rock Machine, the Dark Circle, or any other biker gang, they are just going to reorganize under another name”. If they did so, but continued the same type of activities, recourse to the phrase “in particular” would enable us to prosecute them.

I believe the question we need to ask ourselves is this: If we do not act now, how far is this going to go? We are familiar with the strategy used by the biker gangs. They began by infiltrating the economy. Then they infiltrated major law firms, followed by major accounting firms. In the last three years they have deliberately set out to intimidate the judiciary.

After that it is very probable that the strategy of intimidation will extend to judges. They could very well go after a judge, a parliamentarian and finally a head of state. If we do not take tough action immediately, we can bet that there will be no limits on their strategy. As we know, these people are driven by the desire for gain.

Once again, I repeat, we must act quickly, with vigilance and diligence. There are enough good jurists and the legal community has enough talent and experience to come up with a bill whose wording is sufficiently precise to allow us to achieve the goals we seek.

The Bloc Quebecois wishes to work together with all the opposition parties. In the past, when we made gains in the struggle against organized crime it was because we worked in a very consensual manner.

I am thinking back to when the bill on the collection of DNA material was passed. It was when young Tara Manning had been brutally murdered and all parties in the House worked together in a very mature manner. That was how gains were made.

In conclusion, I will say that the best thing we can do for the security of our communities, for our senior citizens, for our young people who are listening to us tonight and waiting for us to take concrete action, is to recognize, with all the serenity that must characterize our decision making, that we are now at a point where the only way we will win the war against organized crime is by invoking the exemption clause, which is a legitimate clause, a tool that exists in the constitution of 1982.

After having struck down the leaders of organized crime we will be able, in a few years, to re-examine the situation. I am convinced that we will win the battle against organized crime and once that has been done, it will be much easier for our fellow citizens to reconcile themselves with our democratic institutions and to have confidence in our decision-making process and, hence, in our parliamentary process.

[Gurmant Grewal, Reform, Surrey Central, BC]

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.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I have one question for the member opposite. Where has he been when the government passed legislation with respect to additional money for CPIC? Where has he been when we added additional money for the RCMP? Where has he been when we bolstered the immigration services? Where has he been when we have co-ordinated such so that we have CSIS and the RCMP reporting to immigration when it comes to organized criminals coming into Canada? Where has he been when we have negotiated either bilateral or multilateral arrangements with respect to other embassies in foreign lands and with respect to co-operation and sharing of information? Where has he been when the government has acted repeatedly with respect to organized crime?

Are we doing enough? I said in my comments that no, we have to continue to work, continue to pull together and to meet with the provinces and the territorial people to find solutions that are beneficial for all Canadians.

I really would like to know where the hon. member has been during all these times when the government has acted and continues to act. It is very easy to get into the politics of blame, negativity and hurl things like “They are soft on crime”.

As the former chairman of the Waterloo regional police and having been in charge of 700 police officers, I can tell the House that the government is not soft on crime. We continue to work hard when it comes to crime issues, when it comes to justice and due process, when it comes to things like safety and security in our communities. That after all is fundamental to the very fabric of the country.

I ask the hon. member, with all due respect, to read what the government has done, brush up on the statutes and the legislation, take a look at the strides and efforts that we have made in the past little while, especially in the last seven years since we have been in power. Perhaps then he will get a better understanding of where we are heading as a country.

It is easy for the Alliance Party opposite to always try to find the wedge issues or the leverage issues that tend to pit Canadians against Canadians, region against region, people against people, and group against group. That is its raison d'être.

I reject it as do most Canadians because that is not what Canada is all about. Canada is a much better place than the Alliance people opposite would paint it.

[Gurmant Grewal, Reform, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to address the issue the hon. member has raised. He asked where I was. I want to ask him where he was when organized crime was taking place in the streets. Where was he when the moral of police and law enforcement agencies went down? Where was he when a major drug dealer was deported from the country in 1995? He changed his name, came back to Canada in 1997 and is still dealing drugs in the country.

Where was he when he saw the revolving door and that people were selling drugs on east Vancouver streets? I went for a ride along with the RCMP one evening. They showed me all around the back alleys where the drugs were sold and the druggies were using them. The system is a revolving door. The officers told me that as soon as Honduran refugees on the streets see the police car stop they raise their arms because they know the process. They will stick their tongues out because they know they have to be checked. No one is talking but the action is still taking place because the people are used to it.

I invite the member to come to the streets of east Vancouver where people have been dying from drug overdoses. The dealers are entrenched into the system and are not legitimate refugees in Canada. The officers said that when they search the people who are selling drugs every one of them would have a certain amount of money of all denominations in their pockets. They searched them and it was true.

The officers said that if they were to search them they will have a business card of only one lawyer. We saw probably 16 of them. At every corner of the street they had the business card of the same lawyer.

I invite the hon. member to visit east Vancouver to see it and not to sit here and simply make a political attack in the House. I invite him to look through the lens of issues, not through the lens of politics.

It has been the mentality of government members that when opposition parties raise some issue they first ignore it. Then we increase the volume and they reject the premise like the member is doing. When we increase the volume even more they steal the ideas. They should have vision. They should have taken action on organized crime many years ago. The Liberal and Tory governments time and again denied that there was any organized criminal activity taking place anywhere in Canada.

If they had taken action then and had vision we would not be facing this problem today. Government action is many years behind. It should have taken action probably 10, 15 or 20 years ago.

It is never too late but it first has to acknowledge that there is a problem. The Liberals time and again throughout this debate have rejected and failed to acknowledge that there is any problem with organized crime at this moment in Canada.

There is a proverb in English which explains the learning philosophy. I said it in the House some time ago but I will repeat it: He who knows not and knows not that he knows not can never learn. The person will never learn until he recognizes that he does not know.

That is the Liberal mentality. Hon. members of the House have time and again given many analogies and examples and quoted many experts about organized crime. Even I can quote one. Recently the new head of the RCMP, Commissioner Zaccardelli, said members of organized crime were trying to corrupt and threaten parliament and other Canadian institutions.

Crime is everywhere. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I am a member of the subcommittee. I heard what other members did not hear. The member probably is a member of that committee and he was not there. I want to ask him where he was when the committee was having hearings.