Mr. Speaker, I will begin my remarks by saying that organized crime is a very serious situation. I want to emphasize not only to the House but to all Canadians that the Government of Canada, the justice minister, the solicitor general, the Prime Minister and all members of our caucus take this, as I am sure all members of parliament do, in a very serious fashion.
I can tell the House that with my police background I have attended many conferences and was involved in many situations where this was discussed. We looked at this in a very concerted way trying to determine what exactly should be done in this area. We wanted to bring together partners from across Canada and from all levels of government: provincial, federal, territorial, municipal, regional and others, so we could operate effectively and ensure that the kind of policing, policies and laws that we put in place would work in concert to ensure that the scourge of organized crime would be diminished if not eradicated.
I take this very seriously. I, along with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was in the Ukraine and Russia not so long ago where they have huge problems with respect to organized crime and the criminal element. It is of grave concern, especially as it relates to Canada in terms of people trying to get into our country and trying to contaminate the very fine country we have.
We need to redouble our efforts in terms of making sure that our borders in that sense are safe and secure so that our Canadians, no matter where they live in this country, are safe and secure, not only themselves but their families as well.
I will take a moment to recap some of things that have been said in the Chamber tonight. We of course heard the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough lead off with respect to this motion. He made some very interesting comments.
However, the one thing that I take a little exception to is the fact that he said we should look to the United States for a template in terms of how to manage this problem. That really is outrageous when we think about it. The Americans have high crime rates, high murder rates and whole inner cities that have given up as result of criminal activity. People are now living in suburbs with walls around them. The Americans, I say with all due respect to the member, are hardly an example for us to emulate. In fact, they are the worst example.
I also want to point out that during the 1997 election the Progressive Conservative Party actually campaigned, and members of his party were elected as a result of campaigning, on reducing the budget by $83 million in this all important area. I think it is fair to say that it is a little disingenuous for him to get up tonight and say that we should be putting in more money when he campaigned on quite the opposite.
We were also treated to the justice critic for the Alliance getting up and talking about things like not having laws in place to keep criminals out of Canada. I want to again make reference to the Ukraine and Russia where I was not so long ago with the minister. I can tell the member that he, as are all those Alliance members, is point blank wrong. There are in fact laws in place. The minister has made it very clear that people who are undesirable coming to this country will not be admitted. Those directions and operations were given concertedly and with great and due diligence.
The members of the Alliance who keep perpetuating these myths should really take a look in the mirror and give their heads a shake and try to determine why they keep perpetuating this kind of nonsense. What they should do is read the laws. They should understand what the laws stand for and how best to implement them instead of the fearmongering that they are so good at doing. Those extremists opposite with their right wing agenda are always trying to stir up Canadians and pit people against—