Mr. Speaker, first, let me reassure the hon. member. I have never ridden a motorcycle. I do not believe you have ever seen me riding a motorcycle. The member is mistaken. I did however attend an event where I was surrounded by motorcycles, however reluctantly. I did not think it was the best idea in the world, but that is the way it was. I was a young minister at the time and had accepted an invitation. I ended up with fifty motorcycles around me on the fifth floor of an hotel. It was quite strange, but since police officers had spent a lot of time polishing their bikes, it would have been a pity not to play along, especially since I was at a police convention. So, that explains it.
Moving on to something more serious. Yes, this redeployment is of concern to me from the security point of view. First of all—and this is one of the reasons given for the reorganization in Quebec—a proper fight against organized crime requires more than just intelligence gathering. For a police force to be able to fight organized crime properly, which is the main reason I reorganized the Quebec police, there must be very close connections between the cop on the beat and the people who carry out the investigations. I find it most strange, for instance, for the police to be moved away from the borders in order to protect them better. I find that quite odd.
The same mistake was made in the ports. In 1997 federal police were pulled from the port of Montreal. True, the reason was to enable them to concentrate on the major gangs. How was this carried out? Through informants and wiretaps, things that can easily be done out of an office some distance away. I understand the RCMP's motive of wanting to concentrate on this, but by so doing it has lost its local ear to the ground.
The same applies to the fight against organized crime. Why were organized groups setting up elsewhere? For Montreal, they were going to Sorel. For Quebec City, they were setting up in Saint-Nicolas. For Sherbrooke, they were going to the suburbs. They knew that police surveillance was not as close there. If they had stayed in Montreal, they would have been monitored more closely.
Why did the RCMP set up outside urban areas? My very clear impression is that organized crime could be very closely monitored in major centres, but because of shortcomings that I think I have corrected to a certain extent, but certainly not fully, organized crime cells ended up in specific regions.
I think that the RCMP--