Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand today to speak in favour of Bill C-24. I was pleased to listen to the Minister of Justice and I heard the comments made by members of the opposition who seem to have a full understanding of the issue.
If it is not understood in the Canadian public at large, it is well understood in the House by all parties and all speakers that the scale of organized crime in the country and internationally, the magnitude of the threat that it poses to our society, is something of real urgency. The bill addresses it and needs to be passed quickly and put into force.
I would like to speak about the variety and complexity of the problem internationally as well as to individuals, communities, government and private enterprises in Canada.
Internationally there is more than a trillion dollars a year in earned profits from criminal activity worldwide. The figure is growing every year. It has not been hampered and restricted by deficit cutting that governments around the world have had to undergo through the 1990s. These profits have been soaring. In terms of the critical nature of this threat, former President Clinton identified organized crime as the number one threat to national security in the post cold war world.
The citizens of my constituency, Vancouver Quadra, understand the chilling nature of the threat. It is much broader than just gang wars. It involves the supply of drugs to our schools and children. It involves property crime that is attendant on drug addiction which is fed by organized crime. It involves home invasions and the security of our homes. Ten years ago who in our society had heard the chilling terms of terror such as home invasion, carjacking or drive-by shooting? These are new terms of terror which are directly connected to the scourge of organized crime in society.
In terms of our economy, billions of dollars of laundered money are put into our society which is based on a market economy. It is corrupted by them. They debase the vigour of competition in our market economy and threaten our economic viability.
They also threaten our economic institutions. Corruption and organized criminal activity in scams with respect to banks, credit card fraud, telemarketing fraud, insurance fraud and stock market fraud are all part of the growing expanding scourge of organized criminal activity which is sapping the economic strength of the country as well as the safety of our citizens.
In terms of government agencies themselves, we have had troubling information about the infiltration and corruption of people working in government agencies at all levels in Canada and internationally.
These are major challenges for our society. They require new tools, many of which the bill provides. If we think about how we will apply those tools we have to think carefully about the new nature of criminal organizations.
Criminal organizations working in Canada and around the world are no longer monolithic crime families that are suspicious of each other or competitive with each other against criminal projects for turf. Today criminal activity is conducted in a highly networked, complex, flexible and international fashion. Criminal gangs are no longer fighting for turf with each other although that happens, and we know too sadly of the horrors in Quebec of criminal gang wars. However that is not the typical character of organized criminal activity today.
Organized criminal activity works in networks, works in cells across criminal organizations and across borders to uniquely compose a criminal operation across boundaries, gangs and criminal products. It requires a very special approach from law enforcement agencies which is not our traditional approach. It requires those agencies to be more flexible and more resourced in their response. I will be splitting my time.
I would like to comment on the new tools that are necessary and that are being applied by the bill. Monetary resources are needed for police agencies. Those have been provided for over the last two years with increased budgets and there are projected further injections of financial resources for the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies. That is critical.
The bill presents other tools. There will be stiffer penalties for participation in criminal gang activity and broader definitions of what constitutes criminal gangs and criminal activity. There are very important provisions to create the offence of intimidation of officials in the criminal justice system. It is a critical point of protection that is necessary and overdue.
The expanded definitions and increased ability to seize the proceeds of crime are important in the bill. There must be an ability to seize and forfeit property in a fashion that is efficient, quick and hits at the heart of the enterprise nature of organized crime.
The mandatory reporting provisions for suspicious financial transactions are important. Fifteen billion dollars was estimated as the amount of laundered funds from illegal activities in Canada last year.
I will conclude by addressing specifically the unique and changed nature of organized crime in society. It is flexible and networked. It crosses boundaries and is cross organizational. It is necessary to have an integrated and co-ordinated approach across the collection of criminal intelligence, police operations and prosecution of crime. These have to be working as a seamless whole.
The information and intelligence gathering must not be in a secretive closed chest fashion among competing law enforcement agencies. It must be shared in a mandatory fashion, but it must be secure and centrally analyzed. It must be disseminated on a need to know basis and the success and experience of operations have to be fed back into that intelligence system.
The operations themselves must be joint force operations, drawing across law enforcement agencies for the best and the most appropriate resources that can be uniquely composed and targeted on any particular criminal activity. It should then be shut down, redistributed and refocused on other criminal activity if it is to mimic the flexibility and the networks of criminal organizations themselves.
There must be an effective link to intensive prosecution which the bill and the organized criminal justice policy address. Dedicated legal advice must be present at the very earliest stages of an investigation to deal with the incredible complexity of criminal investigations and prosecutions, laws of disclosure, laws of search and seizure, laws of wiretapping, and laws of proceeds of crime. The best legal advice must be used at the beginning of an investigation right through to an intensive prosecution to make sure those prosecutions are successful.
I repeat that organized crime is an immense threat to society. Its magnitude is overwhelming. The bill needs to be passed as soon as possible.