Mr. Speaker, organized crime gangs are both a national and a transnational problem. Up to 70% of the moneys that organized crime gangs derive comes from the trade in illegal drugs. They use those moneys to do other things, such as purchase and import illegal drugs. My province of British Columbia is seeing the effects of this, in bloody terms, with more than 19 murders this year.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Laureate, made a very impressive statement. He said that if we wanted to go after organized crime, would should go after the money.
The best way to undermine organized crime is to dismantle its markets and go after its money supply. One of the ways to do that is to address the issue of drug policy in Canada.
If undermining the drug market for organized crime is one of the best ways to get rid of organized crime gangs, would my colleague try to curry favour in his party to a revised approach to substance abuse in Canada and pursue the decriminalization of the simple possession of marijuana? Would he encourage his government to look at Norway and Portugal as examples? Those countries have significantly undermined organized crime gangs and reduced the use of both hard and soft drugs, which in turn has reduced crime.
Would he also ask his government to remove its legal appeal against British Columbia? The courts have said that the government has a moral obligation to allow harm reduction strategies like Insite and the Naomi project to have national exposure.