Mr. Speaker, I too would like to congratulate my colleague on the justice committee, the member from the Bloc who has brought forward this excellent motion.
The motion we are discussing this morning is one that deserves all of our attention. Organized crime is not a new problem in Canada but has been recognized as a growing one. It affects Canadians from coast to coast and it affects people in countries throughout the world. Whether it is a fraudulent telemarketing scheme preying on seniors in Montreal or a large shipment of narcotics through the port of Vancouver, organized crime manifests itself in many ways.
The word globalization has been used more and more frequently as the millennium draws to a close. The development of computers and network technologies is creating a global revolution in human communication and commerce, but it is also creating new opportunities for crime that we must now address. In Canada, developing effective measures to deal with computer related crime has raised numerous challenges. It has required us to meet these challenges in ways that previous generations could never have imagined possible.
More and more we find ourselves looking outward to the international community in our search for solutions. We look to our neighbours because we can learn from their ideas, from their successes and from their failures. But there is more to it than that. In a new environment of high speed low cost communications, we need policies and legislation and practical solutions that are compatible with those of our neighbours. In the high tech environment, the list of neighbours with whom we must co-operate is much longer than it ever was in the past.
We share crime control problems, not just with those countries with whom we share physical borders and trade links and with whom we share political and social beliefs, but also with those who are distant from us geographically and philosophically.
Any country in the world with an airport, telephones, fax machines or Internet access may be a base for offenders targeting Canadians or a source of victims for Canadian offenders. They could also serve as a haven for the concealment of evidence or illegally gained proceeds of crime.
Developments in the world of high technology create many challenges that we must now address if we are to maximize the benefits of globalization for our citizens, but at the same time protecting them from these risks that we are discussing here in the House today.
I will discuss four specific challenges facing Canada and its international partners in this area of high tech crime. First, the challenge that arises from the time pressures imposed by the rapid and highly volatile nature of computer communication. Those who investigate cases of high tech crime must be able to successfully locate the source of attacks and seize electronic evidence or proceeds of crime in an environment where these can be erased completely at the touch of a finger or moved cross national borders without detection or scrutiny. The challenges of law enforcement is to ensure that they are technically able and sufficiently resourced to locate criminals and preserve that data. The government has made it perfectly clear that we intend to provide the RCMP with the tools it needs to do the job in the fight against organized crime.
Our challenge as legislators is more difficult. It is the problem of creating laws that will ensure that national borders do not provide offenders with increased opportunities to hide their identity or location, or to conceal or destroy evidence so as to evade detection.
Another challenge relates to the creation of new rules. Traditionally the development of policy in the international community has taken place incrementally at a slow pace as measures are thoroughly examined and discussed until consensus is reached. Consensus of course is still an essential ingredient in our approach, but we will find ourselves faced with a need to achieve it more quickly than ever before as we are able to successfully keep up with the rapidly changing technology while protecting our citizens and fostering a healthy climate for the traffic of information and commerce into the next millennium
The third challenge that I will discuss arises from the costs associated with law enforcement in this new global electronic environment. Many of the obvious costs in detecting and investigating transnational crime are currently borne by national governments and agencies. The governments' challenge, one which we share with industries and the private sector, is that of creating rules and practices which address all of the challenges that I have mentioned, but which also minimize the cost that governments must bear and maximize the degree of crime control that we can hope to achieve with our limited resources.
There are further cost factors to be considered. Many of the options open to us, such as requiring service providers to use particular types of technology or retain data for extended periods of time, offer effective law enforcement but at significant cost.
Until relatively recently, cost implications would have been purely domestic policy questions, but in the present era of globalization it has become one of international trade as well.
We must establish rules and practices to fight transnational crime that are economically fair and maintain a level playing field for communication industries that now operate already in a very competitive global milieu. Imposing undue burdens on certain industries may well result in their relocating outside of our country and by so doing they will create safe havens for criminals who wish to abuse new communication and information networks.
We have undertaken a dialogue here in Canada with the private sector and we find it very willing to co-operate in preventing criminal abuse.
We are engaged, we are committed and we welcome the opportunity that this motion has brought to have this matter brought before the House Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, of which I am a member.
