Allan Rock

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, I believe the relevant section of the code is section 82 which provides for the original offence. The code also contains the the definition of explosive substance. It includes anything intended to be used to make an explosive substance; anything or any part thereof used or intended to be used or adapted to cause or to aid in causing an explosion in or with an explosive substance; and an incendiary grenade, fire bomb, molotov cocktail or other similar incendiary substance or device and a delaying mechanism or other thing intended for use in connection with such a substance or device.

That definition has been in the code for some years. It has been the subject of jurisprudence. It is well known in the courts. We used it in this section, intending it to have the same meaning it always had for many years.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member mentioned his interest in the issue of money laundering. As I said before, we already adopted Bill C-17. In this bill, sections 27 to 39 deal with money laundering. Most of the improvements mentioned by the hon. member have already been passed in Bill C-17.

Of course we need more. As I said before, we do not see Bill C-95 as the last phase of our efforts but as an initial step. So let us start with the first step, and then in a few months or a few years we will propose other measures, but for the first time, this bill will provide a legal framework for dealing with organized crime.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that, as a government, we have acted promptly and effectively in response to the demands, not only from the Government of Quebec, but also from police forces throughout Canada, with respect to organized crime.

Not only have we reacted with Bill C-95, now before us, but we have also passed Bill C-17. When I was in Quebec with my counterpart, Quebec Minister of Justice Paul Bégin, he asked me to act to fight organized crime in the Criminal Code, and also to get C-17 through rapidly, which we did. That bill is now in the other place.

We also passed Bill C-8 against the drug and narcotic traffickers. These are very valuable measures for the police forces, including the organized crime squads.

But with Bill C-95, we decided not to go with the option whereby mere membership in an organization would constitute a criminal offence. That proposal came mainly from Nr. Bégin and the Government of Quebec, who asked for an amendment to the Criminal Code making mere membership in a criminal organization a criminal offence. The idea, I presume, was to have a schedule to the legislation which would list the criminal groups and gangs

We looked seriously at that option. We studied the consequences and concluded that such an approach would be unconstitutional; it was neither desirable nor necessary to go beyond the law or the legal framework to have an effective and durable bill. We therefore decided on other measures, which are now in Bill C-95.

We are convinced that our approach is valid and constitutional. It is very important to me to avoid raising false hopes. For us,

adopting a measure such as the one proposed by Mr. Bégin, only to have the courts toss it out in six months, would be an approach that would raise false hopes among Quebecers and Canadians. So we found a response or a valid approach to this situation.

The hon. member asks why we went no further. In my opinion, this bill is the start, the first phase in our legislative response to organized crime. Without a doubt, we are going to find the other approaches in the months and years to come. For the moment, however, the measures before the House are valid, constitutional and also, I believe, effective.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has told me that he and his colleagues in the Reform Party support this bill. I hope he has a better understanding than he has indicated of how the bill is going to help.

When you have a medical problem you go to a doctor. When you have a legal problem you go to a lawyer. When you want to know what will help the police in what they are doing to combat crime on the streets you go to the police. That is what we did. We went to the police.

I spoke with Chief Duchesneau, the director of the Montreal Urban Community Police Department. I met with Chief Richard Renaud from Quebec. I met with a dozen chiefs of police and directors of police departments three weeks ago in Hull. I talked with police forces about their needs and about the changes that could be made to the Criminal Code to give them better tools to fight organized crime. Most of the measures contained in Bill C-95 were proposed by police officers. They have been working with us for months to find ways to deal with this problem.

The police themselves think that these measures will improve the law and help us arrest and prosecute those responsible for the murders referred to by the hon. member.

We did not develop these proposals in a vacuum. We did not develop them in the absence of practical advice from the police on the street. We worked very closely with the police community in devising these measures. We have given the police tools that will help them.

The hon. member asks how and he referred to wiretaps. Far more than that is given by this bill. It is permitted to seal up information on which warrants are obtained in order to protect the confidentiality of informants, in order to protect the lives of informants, in order to make it easier for police to derive information from third parties to help them in their war on organized crime.

It is provided that, under certain circumstances, with court order, investigating officers can get access to income tax information in the course of investigating organized crime. That is a rare event. To the present, Revenue Canada and Finance, because of the traditional confidentiality of income tax information, has permitted access to investigating officers only in a limited category of cases. We propose to expand that to include the participation offence in organized crime.

The legislation will permit the seizing not only of the proceeds of crime but any property used to help commit organized crime, including real estate if it is fortified or modified to enable or facilitate the commission of those offences.

The legislation provides for stern, stiff prison sentences for those who engage in organized crime. Let me make that point clear so that the hon. member sees the full force and effect of these provisions.

Not only the leaders that the hon. member for the Bloc was asking about, but members and even strangers to the group who are enticed for cash, for example, to transport, to store or to place explosives on the part of a criminal organization, these stiff sentences will stand in the way of anyone who is complicit with organized crime.

The onus on bail applications for those arrested on organized crime offences are reversed. The court in sentencing for organized crime offences and for explosives offences committed in connection with organized crime are required not only to impose the stiff sentence but required that it be served consecutive to any other sentence the person is then serving or to which they may be required to serve as a result of other infractions.

The police, with the authority of the attorney general of the province, will be given the powerful tool of seeking a judicial restraint order where there are grounds on which a judge can conclude that there is a reasonable basis to fear that someone will commit an organized crime offence.

That is determined on the civil balance of probabilities and not the criminal beyond a reasonable doubt. The court will be empowered to make an order limiting the liberty of that person, requiring that person to comply with conditions that are appropriate, that may, for example, prohibit one member of such a group from communicating with others.

These are powerful and important tools that the police welcome. If the chiefs of police believe that these tools will assist in their efforts against organized crime, if those who are on the ground dealing with these problems day after day who have developed expertise, who have experience, believe that these tools are powerful and useful, to be a first step, to be the first phase, establishing a framework to which can be added more in the months and years ahead, then I say we should conclude that not only in our own judgment but based on the advice of those who know from their own experience that this bill is going to make a difference out where it belongs, in the real world.

Before I conclude, in answer to the hon. member's question, he referred to registering guns. In a pattern that has become all too distressingly familiar over the years, as he has returned with his remarkable attachment to his opposition to any form of gun control, the hon. member seeks to instil the hysterical reaction which he seeks in others by overstating his case.

The hon. member knows full well that if someone fails to register the garden variety .22, we have provided not in the Criminal Code, but in the firearms act, for a remedy which falls far short of the draconian consequences to which he has referred. The hon. member takes a hypothetical case and attaches to it the most extreme result.

I think the country is on to his pattern of activity by now. Just in case there is anyone out there who has not seen the hon. member at work in the past on this subject, for the record it should be noted that he has once again misstated the case in order to encourage over reaction to legislation that he has been opposed to from the outset because he just does not like gun control.

As I say, it is regrettable he is so out of step with the vast majority of Canadians. I guess that is something he is going to have to live with.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, it is remarkable, no matter what the subject, how the hon. member somehow finds a gun in it somewhere. Such is his dedication and his passion of commitment to opposing gun control in Canada. It is regrettable.

I happen to think the hon. member is completely out of step with the vast majority of Canadian people who want to see us take military type assault weapons off the street. I think the vast majority of Canadians support the fact that we banned the future sale and import of most cheaply made handguns called Saturday Night Specials that have killed so many police officers in the U.S. We do not want them in Canada.

The majority of Canadians support gun control which gives police officers the tools they need to take guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. It is regrettable that no matter what the subject, the bill, the measure or the objective, the hon. member will find some way to bring it back to his passionate commitment to oppose gun control which is so broadly supported in the country. It is odd and curious, but it is something I have to live with. In living with it let me do the best I can to respond to the question in which the hon. member has laboured to make firearms somehow relevant to anti-gang legislation.

I do not think the example given by the hon. member could possibly be. I suppose we could invent facts to make it happen, but he is talking about individuals acting on individual occasions and not respecting the law passed by Parliament. I hope all Canadians would respect the law passed by Parliament. He may know some people who do not or will not. That is interesting.

Let us get back to what Bill C-95 is all about. Let us get back to what the anti-organized crime bill is all about. It is all about those who band together in groups or associations to ruthlessly dedicate their lives and their efforts to profit at the expense of others and sometimes at the expense of the lives of others.

It is about giving police tools to deal with those who would put at risk the lives of families and of children by battling over turf for illegal drug distribution. It is about finding a way to deal with hardened criminals, career criminals who over the last five years have committed a series of serious criminal offences and are committing indictable crimes punishable by five years or more in prison.

This is the hard core of organized crime in Canada. They are at war right now in the province of Quebec. The cost has been measured in human lives, in the peace of mind of communities. I met people from towns and cities in Quebec who are not able to take their children for a walk down their own street, who tell me they are afraid to go to parks in their towns and who feel their communities are under siege.

They live in fear in their communities. This is unacceptable in Canada. The conditions described by the people who live in these towns and villages in Quebec cannot be tolerated. I met with the mayors of some of these communities. They told me straight off that these conditions were unacceptable, and I agree with them. That is why we took action. We have now done our share to amend the Criminal Code and to propose measures that will help our police forces fight these offences.

That is what this bill is all about. As much as the hon. member might use his creativity to imagine ways to make his opposition to gun control relevant to an organized crime bill, it is interesting, creative and mildly amusing. It is even charming in a way because the hon. member has made such a career out of it. However, it is hardly relevant, not helpful and it is broadly off the point.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

That is exactly what we intend. In relation to my interpretation of the act, I invite the member to look at section 20 of the Young Offenders Act as an example of what I am talking about. It relates to young persons being found guilty of offences for which the punishment provided by the Criminal Code or any other act of Parliament is imprisonment for life.

In other words, section 20 of the Young Offenders Act speaks about offences provided for in the Criminal Code for which the punishment may be more than that which can be given under the Young Offenders Act. It does not mean the offences do not apply to young people. They certainly do. It simply means that if a person of that age is charged, they are transferred and the maximum contained in the Young Offenders Act applies.

I know the situation described by the hon. member is true. I have spent evenings travelling with the youth gang section of the Winnipeg police force. I went out in their cars with them. I watched while they cruised the streets. I listened to their explanations of the kinds of crimes they investigate. I walked the beat with police officers of the Edmonton police force. I spent an evening on the streets of Vancouver with members of the Vancouver police force, sometimes driving and sometimes walking along the streets and the back alleys of downtown Vancouver. I saw for myself the extent to which young people are tragically caught up in crime and all too often at the direction of older people.

I spent time driving through the streets with the Calgary police force, seeing young people involved in unlawful activity and too often under the direction or encouragement of older people.

I well recognize the same could be said of Toronto, Halifax, Quebec City and Ottawa. In each of those places I have travelled with the police in their cars to watch them at work and to see for myself very troubling, very serious situations.

Our intention with this statute is to catch the kind of case to which the hon. member has referred. The investigative tools will be available to police officers looking into groups that involve people under the age of 18 to see if they are engaged in the commission of offences for which penalties are described under the Criminal Code. That is the intention and based on this wording I believe that is the effect.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Person will have its usual and ordinary meaning.

As I said before in the first segment of this committee meeting, the definition and the measures contained in Bill C-95 apply to any group of persons consisting of those who have engaged in the commission of serious indictable offences over the last five years and where the group has as one of its primary activities the commission of those offences. There will be no exemption from the definition by reason of age.

The criteria are dependent upon offences in the code which are indictable and punishable by a maximum of five or more years imprisonment. That does not disqualify young offenders. Anyone who meets that definition will be covered. As I said in answer to the questions put by the hon. member for Crowfoot, it may be that a particular accused because of the Young Offenders Act will face the jeopardy governed by the Young Offenders Act. That does not mean that Bill C-95 does not apply.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

This is not one of those ways in which Quebec forms a distinct society within Canada. This problem is not unique to Quebec. It is found throughout the country. The legislation speaks to a problem which is pan-Canadian. I wish sometimes the problem of organized crime was confined to a particular area but it is not.

In February 1996 the police sat the solicitor general and I down and took us through virtually a full day's briefing on the state of organized crime. We heard from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, the RCMP and the organized crime committee of the chiefs of police. They talked about the different forms in which organized crime is found whether it is in Atlantic Canada, in Ontario, on the prairies or on the west coast. It is remarkable the number of forms in which corruption, intimidation and violence can be found, all in a ruthless effort to squeeze profit out of innocent people and to victimize others.

This is not something distinctly associated with one province or one area of the country. It is a problem which is Canada wide and requires a Canada-wide solution if we are to deal with it. That is why the legislation is of general application.

I spoke with the chiefs of police in Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg. I spoke with the attorneys general of Manitoba and Ontario. In all those conversations I was encouraged in this work. The methods we were looking at struck a responsive chord because all those law officers know we are not dealing here with a distinct Quebec issue but with a scourge that afflicts the country as a whole.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, perhaps the best way to respond to that question is to use an example that the hon. member will find relevant from his own personal experience.

Three weeks ago I spoke with the chief of police and the mayor of Vancouver. I told them of our intensified work in seeking to craft legislation which would provide police with better tools in their fight against gangs and organized crime. Chief Canuel and Mayor Owen enthusiastically encouraged me in my work and asked for an opportunity to comment on the proposals we had under consideration.

Chief Canuel told me of incidents in Vancouver involving gang activity, involving organized crime. He reminded me that the need for this legislation is as great or greater in other parts of the country than it is in Quebec. The mayor of Vancouver took the same position. When I spoke to the Attorney General of British Columbia, the hon. Ujjal Dosanjh, he was most constructive and enthusiastic. He encouraged me in this work. He asked me to work quickly, as did colleague attorneys general across the country.

I received a letter from the Vancouver police department proposing specific measures to be included in this bill. We were able to include five or six of the specific proposals that the chief in Vancouver said he would find very important in his work.

This bill does not concern a specific province. It does not concern a particular place. The bill seeks to address a problem which can be found in various forms throughout this great country. It is an affliction which we have to deal with in every province and in both territories. One of the enduring values of the legislation is that it will put useful tools into the hands of police forces throughout Canada.

Let the headlines say what they will. Governments are always either before or after elections. If something is introduced within six months of an election, it is branded as a cynical ploy. I would rather remember the image I have in my mind of the mother with whom I met last week in Montreal who lost her son in a gang war. She said to me: "Put aside politics. Get this legislation in place. Give the police the tools. I want them to find the people responsible for taking the life of my son".

That has nothing to do with elections. It is doing something meaningful in criminal law to help a victim, to help police and to try to achieve a common objective, which is to rid the country of organized crime.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

First, I undertake that the answers I give will be no more political than the questions I receive from the party opposite. Before two o'clock I had to listen to a question that was steeped, that indeed was suffused in partisan rhetoric and so it was necessary for me to respond by setting the record straight.

This bill will not be law tonight because it has to go to other place. It may be passed in this House today and if it is, I think we will have done a real service.

The hon. member asks about the priority of bills and why the DNA bill is not going forward at the same pace. As the solicitor general made clear when he tabled that bill, the DNA legislation, Bill C-94, covers some matters which are still truly controversial. There are real debates in policy and in law about the better course to pursue. The solicitor general has chosen to ask the committee to consider that bill after first reading and before adoption in principle by the House so as to leave open to parliamentarians the opportunity to question the basic approach suggested on the main issues in that legislation.

The Canadian Police Association has its own viewpoint as to how the bill should operate and when samples should be taken and the rules of access to samples in the data bank. If we speak to civil libertarians or women's groups we receive very different responses. Questions arose the very first day when the bill was tabled that demonstrate the extent to which there is controversy on those subjects. In relation to the DNA legislation, Bill C-94, there are still important policy issues to be canvassed and resolved.

In relation to this legislation, the proposals are of a different order. Here we propose specific, concrete, practical changes to the Criminal Code that will take existing investigative techniques which have been part of our criminal law for generations and change access to those techniques in the unique circumstance of investigating organized crime.

We also have a definition of organized crime which has been carefully crafted to encompass the most serious offences committed over an extended period of time and a group which is dedicated to that serious kind of crime.

We have resorted to traditional criminal law techniques such as increasing sentences, providing that membership or association in organized crime is an aggravating factor in determining the sentence.

There is also an elaboration of an existing peace bond provision, through proposed 810.3 in a way that builds upon sections that are already in the Criminal Code and which have been tested for some time. The same can be said of the fruits of crime and the instrumentalities of crime.

Whereas in DNA we are embarking on a brave new world with a technique which has been in place in only three other countries that we know of, with Bill C-95 we are building upon existing mechanisms and existing laws, elaborating on them to meet a specific threat, the threat of organized crime.

I think this is far more appropriate for the disposition of the House. It could very well be that the other place will hold hearings. As far as I understand it, it intends to hold hearings. If the hon. member wants an occasion to hear other voices, I believe the other place will provide that.