Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette for his question. Indeed, I would like to pay tribute to him, for when we first talked about Info-crime and the possibility of setting up Info-crime committees all over Quebec, he was the first to launch an initiative in his riding. Since then, the Joliette Info-crime committee has been one of the most active in Quebec in terms of combating organized crime.
He has of course put his finger on something that is fundamental. When I was talking about luxury gardeners earlier, in reference to grow operators linked to the Hells Angels, that is not my own expression. I should have explained where it comes from. It comes from Commissioner Bourduas of the RCMP, who is responsible for Quebec and Eastern Canada. He was telling us that it was not the RCMP's role to hunt down luxury gardeners, as he called them. I hope he will reconsider his understanding of the situation. The Hells Angels, like the other criminal groups involved in the production and trafficking of narcotics, are not luxury gardeners. We saw a sad example of this in the west last week, with the murder of four RCMP officers. I take this opportunity to offer my condolences to the families and friends bereaved by this quadruple murder.
We must get back to basic necessities. When police forces are not on the ground closely tracking the networks, the establishment of networks and their connections with international networks, they cannot do their work properly. We had an example of this with the events of September 11 in the United States. The Senate committee looked into what the government should have done but did not do, what the police should have done but did not do, what the CIA should have done but did not do. It has become clear that the CIA did exactly what the RCMP is doing right now, which is to remove the police officers on the ground who were in the habit of doing surveillance, of getting to know the local networks and their international connections. They put them in central offices in New York and Washington and told them: “Now do the same work you did before”. There was nobody on the ground.
Now the RCMP is making the same mistake. This happened in Ontario, and now the RCMP is no longer in Northern Ontario. The distances are far too great. When there are 300 km to go in order to answer a call or tail people, it is not an effective way to start an investigation. We will therefore continue our fight to keep the nine detachments open and the RCMP continuing to do its outstanding job, together with the Sûreté du Québec, in order to fight organized crime better. Closing a detachment is giving organized crime another opportunity. It is they who benefit most from this decision.