Madam Speaker, I am very interested in Bill C-53. In fact, it does my heart good that we are debating this bill today because I am putting myself in the mindset of police officers in recent history. One can imagine the frustration they feel when they drive by the home of somebody they know full well to be involved in some unsavoury element of organized crime and see the big boat in the driveway, the Ski-Doo and the 4 x 4, and the affluence of a person with no visible means of support who has not filed income tax for five years.
There are people like that who people involved in the criminal justice know full well are guys who are up to no good. It seems like the criminals get to thumb their nose at the police officers who are held to a much higher test in terms of the onus being on them to prove, and this is an almost impossible test, that this person had managed to acquire these luxury items by legal means.
I can just imagine the frustration that police officers must be feeling. I am glad to hear virtual unanimity across the party lines that something should be done to put the tools in the hands of the good guys, and put the burden of proof and the onus on the bad guys to clear up where they got the means to buy something like a 40-foot luxury cabin cruiser. I do not accept any arguments or any criticisms that this could in any way violate someone's constitutional rights. I would ask them to simply reveal where they got the money to buy the boat, or whatever the luxury item might be.
I ask this question of my colleague because I know he has first-hand experience in these things, having been the attorney general for the province of Manitoba for a number of years. What would he recommend we put in place as a process to ensure that the provinces and the law enforcement agencies get their fair share of the proceeds that may come from liquidating these assets and that the money does not in fact end up going into the black hole that we know is the consolidated revenue fund of the Government of Canada?
Can he recommend, even if it is not as an aspect of the legislation, some process by which we will get to use some of these proceeds for future law enforcement and that it does not go to a God knows what priority of the government of the day?