Mr. Speaker, the murder attempt on journalist Michel Auger in Quebec last week was the latest in a series of unfortunate events, to say the least, that have led us to make the following statement: some 150 persons have been assassinated in the course of the biker war in Quebec in recent years.
The attempt on Mr. Auger was the limit and makes it clear just how much organized crime and criminal organizations have become an unacceptable presence in our society—a presence that of itself is unacceptable—but of a significance today that makes all the more unacceptable the action they have taken, what they are doing and what they will do in the years to come.
Last year, my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot was threatened because he reported the cultivation of marijuana on farms in his region. Last week a journalist was attacked because he wrote about organized crime. Sometimes—according to a federal report—judges are threatened. This points to the extreme importance of the matter. There is no place better than the House of Commons to consider this issue.
The criminal code must be amended and put at the disposal of the forces of order and justice whatever means they need to get these criminals, these people belonging to criminal gangs, sentenced. Let us not forget—and it is regrettable to say—that most of the proceedings initiated against these people have met with failure because it was too hard to come up with the evidence. There is vast evidence, and reference to the charter of rights and the use of arguments of all sorts mean that the legal system can no longer produce the evidence.
Accordingly, we sincerely believe that the federal parliament must not only debate this matter. We would have liked to have the House of Commons vote on this so as to be perfectly clear, to have each member asked to rise and say what he or she thinks of this matter: should the federal parliament and the Government of Canada amend the criminal code? That is what we thought, but we would agree to there at least being a debate of this issue, to our sharing viewpoints and to this helping the government decide and respond to this urgent request from the people of Quebec.