Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for this motion. It is an excellent one. It gets to the heart of an issue that affects every province from coast to coast. The issue is, how do we deal with organized crime in a rational fashion?
We know much of the organized crime is rooted in illegal activities and the best way to deal with organized crime and criminals is to cut the financial underpinnings. The motion would do that. I want to congratulate the member for the Bloc Québécois for bringing this forward. It will go a long way in helping RCMP officers deal with this cancer within our midst.
To put it in context, in my province of British Columbia grow ops have become a very big thing. We saw this with the profound tragedy which occurred a week ago involving the RCMP. In my province, 85% of grow ops are attached to organized crime, in particular motorcycle gangs and Vietnamese organized crime gangs.
The organized crime gangs trade high grade marijuana for cocaine. The profits from the marijuana are massive considering it is only a weed. The profits are so high because of the existing prohibition. Prohibition of the weed and massive profits are too seductive to organized crime. As a result, these moneys have destabilized vast swathes of our Canadian society because it is intimately involved in prostitution, embezzlement, extortion and in the trafficking of other elements of contraband.
I will cite a couple of examples that are very important to the security of Canadians, particularly the trafficking of weapons, illegal immigrants, alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. My province of British Columbia alone tragically has become a major conduit of heroine, cocaine and pot, not only within Canada but also in and out of the United States of America.
I want to congratulate the member for the motion. It will help the RCMP and courts to do the most effective thing we have within our powers, which is to address the financial underpinnings of organized crime. The Americans did this with their RICO amendments or racketeering influence corruption organization amendments. Those amendments are along the lines of what the member is proposing and enable the courts to go after organized crime.
If the major purpose of the member's motion is to address the parasites that are attached to organize crime, particularly as they affect the province of Quebec where this is a massive problem, what other suggestions does he recommend to the House that could be used to assist police forces across the country to address this problem? It does not only affect the province of Quebec but it a affects my province of British of Columbia and the whole of Canada as well.