Michel Bellehumeur

[Committee Of The House, April 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to use the time left.

Earlier-I would appreciate it if hon. members would pay more attention-I was discussing the report of the public accounts committee and pointing out that my colleague did an excellent job. He looked at the inconsistency, the inaccuracy and the non-compliance of the committee in this-

[Committee Of The House, April 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me. I am certain the member for Saint-Hubert would have delivered an excellent speech. I will try to be just as good.

A moment ago I heard some Liberal members tell the member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans that it was all the Conservatives' doing. I believe we should set the record straight. Family trusts are the creation, a great big Liberal baby, of the Liberals under Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in 1970.

In 1970, Pierre Elliott Trudeau in his great wisdom created family trusts for 21 years to reward friends of the government, friends of the Liberal Party and other federal parties, since the main goal of family trusts is to avoid taxes and allow families to get richer.

Therefore, in 1970, the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, of which the present Prime Minister was a member, since the member for Saint-Maurice was in Pierre Elliott Trudeau's cabinet in 1970, created family trusts for 21 years.

What happened in 1991, 21 years later? The Tories, who were against family trusts in 1970, came into office with Mr. Mulroney as Prime Minister, and they decided to maintain the family trusts.

Really, 1991 was an exceptional year. I think that our viewers should pay attention to what is going to be said next, if they ever had doubts about the efficacy of the public service. I will tell them what happened on December 23, 1991, Christmas Eve, at about 11.30 p.m. Some public officials went in to work, to allow the Bronfman family, two wealthy families in fact, to transfer some $2 billion to the United States.

The day before Christmas, some government employees came to Ottawa, went in to their offices at 11.30 p.m. and authorized multibillionaire families to transfer $2 billion to the United States without paying a single penny in taxes.

Do you know what kind of Christmas gift that represented for those families in 1991? It meant approximately $500 million, an amount which the Canadian taxpayers paid, donated to those multibillionaire families. What did the Tory government and the Liberals do meanwhile? They turned a blind eye. Because, as we all know, these families give to Liberals and Tories alike.

Fundamentally, these families are federalists. Whether the Liberal or Conservatives are in power is of no consequence to them. In any case, they manipulate them through their campaign fund. This is how they manipulate the big parties opposite, the parties that are funded by these big families. This is why the Liberal or Conservative government is so generous.

Here we have the biggest scandal of the century breaking out. We learned about this scandal, $2 billion transferred from Canada to the United States without any tax being paid. What did the government do? What did the Bloc Quebecois do? The Bloc Quebecois immediately condemned this action, especially when we know that the Liberal government is attacking the poorest. It makes cuts to unemployment insurance, to transfer payments. What must the provinces do, then, if they are stuck with cuts of $4.5 billion, like this year? They have to cut welfare, health care. It

is the federalists opposite, the Liberals opposite, who are primarily responsible for that.

We know that two families got $2 billion out of Canada. We know that the government seems to have trouble finding money for social programs. What did the Bloc do? It asked a parliamentary committee to examine the issue and to see whether or not the officials who met one Christmas eve to give a nice $500 million gift to two multimillionaire families in Canada, had not shown a lack of integrity.

It is obvious that, at the time, Liberals sitting on the committee agreed with the Bloc Quebecois. They were really astounded by that announcement, by that scandal, and they seemed to want to get to the bottom of the issue. They seemed to want to co-operate with the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition, to examine the issue, so this would not happen again.

However, the members who had shown some resistance, who had dared voice their opinion before checking with the Prime Minister, fell back into line, saying there was no problem, everything was all right. But it is not all right to let this go on.

The committee had to determine if there was any interference by officials. Did they or did they not show any lack of integrity? These are the big questions the committee had to ask and answer. Instead, all the Liberal members of the committee spent the whole time trying to sidestep the issue, to avoid shedding light on this extremely important matter.

Did the committee have the power, the authority to shed light on this matter? Yes, it did. Had it made use of all its powers and all the parliamentary mechanisms available, it could indeed have shed light on the matter. Yes, it could definitely have pointed a finger at those responsible and provided a permanent solution to the problem.

What did the Liberal majority in the committee do? What were they instructed to do by the Prime Minister of Canada? They started by preventing the committee from fulfilling its mandate. That is what they did. They refused to use the investigative powers available to them. They would not let the committee hear the testimony of all the officials involved. They did not want the committee to hold more than two meetings to consider this scandal.

It is the scandal of the century. Never before in Canadian history have such huge amounts been taken out of the country without the proper taxes being paid. The Liberal government across the way and its Prime Minister persist in wanting to protect the friends of the Liberal Party, those who put money into the party's campaign fund. I am sure that, on the eve of calling an election, the Prime Minister got on the phone to remind a few friends they had been spared in the family trust scandal, adding: "I hope you will remember how good the Liberal Party was to you, because there is an election coming".

That is how it works. They had all the facts, but chose not to act. They would rather let things be. They ran interference when Bloc members asked questions. Yet, $2 billion was taken out of the country. I would say that was pretty serious. What did the Bloc members on the committee do? They drafted a dissenting opinion to make it clear to the government they disagreed with the government's attitude on this issue.

Quite frankly, with respect to this issue, given how much money is involved, I think it is fair to say, seriously and honestly, that the Bloc Quebecois took a very effective approach on the issue and acted with professionalism in immediately blowing the whistle on this scandal and seeking to correct the situation.

There is no way that all aspects of an issue as important as this one can be considered in just two days. No way. This was not the first time that the Liberal government used such a tactic. The government did the same thing in the case of the Somalia inquiry. It did not give enough time to the commissioners and judges to get the real answers to the legitimate questions of Quebecers and Canadians.

The same is true in the case of family trusts, this outrageous scandal. Some Canadians and Quebecers had legitimate questions, but the solutions and answers to these questions could not be found in two days.

In a dissenting report, the Bloc Quebecois referred to some evidence and testimony before the committee. You cannot hear many witnesses in two days, but you can still take note of certain things.

Mr. Speaker, since my time is almost up, I would like to conclude by moving a motion.

I move:

That the House do now adjourn.

[Linguistic School Boards, April 22nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, let us make things clear here. Why does the minister not agree that the real reason he and his government, the Liberal government, are dragging their feet on what Quebec is asking is that he does not want to get on the wrong side of his former allies, his natural and traditional allies, Alliance Québec and The Gazette ?

That is the real reason. And what is more, he does not want to get on the wrong side of the disciples of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who are in the process of organizing into a common front, once again at the expense of Quebec. That is the real reason. Let him admit it.

[Linguistic School Boards, April 22nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, when Quebec is involved, things always get really complicated with the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Yet there is a precedent in New Brunswick, where there was no consensus. Their Legislative Assembly was even divided, yet the federal government moved quickly, even managing to get a motion through without a vote in the House of Commons.

Whereas in Quebec there has been talk of education structures since the Parent report in 1966, and a consensus was reached, as even the minister admits, at least 20 years ago, and what is more this has again been confirmed with the general assembly in Quebec, and as well there is unanimity in the National Assembly on the matter.

Here is my question for the minister. Why does the federal government insist on wanting to apply its old double standard policy where the wishes of the Quebec people are concerned?

[Linguistic School Boards, April 22nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, in his ministerial statement this morning, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs admitted that many voices, both francophone and anglophone, Catholic as well as Protestant, have been heard over the last twenty years advocating a system based on language rather than religion.

The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs even indicated that a consensus on the need to reorganize school administration along these lines has existed in Quebec for some time.

Since even the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs admits there has been a consensus for the past 20 years, how can he explain that his actions are again opening the Quebec consensus up to question, by deliberately delaying the start of the debate and the adoption of this motion?

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to speak at this stage on Bill C-95. As my hon. colleague for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve has just said, we have co-operated throughout the day and the Bloc Quebecois proposals are what accelerated the process of getting Bill C-95, an aAct to amend the Criminal Code (criminal organizations) and to amend other Acts in consequence, passed as quickly as possible.

For us in the Bloc Quebecois, this is not just a matter that has been debated here for the past week. It is a very important subject. From the start, the Bloc Quebecois has been highly aware of the problem, because it is very much present in Quebec. As far back as 1995, we tried to convince the minister of the importance of legislation on gangs, of anti-biker gang legislation, of legislation to fight the scourge of organized crime.

You will recall that the Bloc Quebecois had to question the government on several occasions sine 1995, that we in the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition, had to make speeches in this House in order to convince the minister. Press conferences had to be held.

On several occasions, the hon. member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve met with the police chiefs. He even played a lead role in a pressure group lobbying for action to finally be taken in this area, for the passage of legislation against the biker gangs.

You will recall, as well, that we even applied to the Speaker of the House for an emergency debate to be held on the whole matter of motorcycle gangs, organized crime and money laundering. You will recall that we were told there was no emergency. In 1993, the Bloc Quebecois promised its electors to give them real power and to defend their interests and it kept asking the federal government to take action, to do something that would put an end to this scourge.

Though we are not responsible for introducing legislation, because we do not have the millions of dollars and the hundreds of lawyers who work in the Department of Justice-our means are very limited-we proposed in 1995 and later in private bills some definitions and means that would allow us to really go after organized crime and gang leaders. We proposed that in good faith to the government. We tried to force it to do what it is expected to do, and that is to legislate in its own jurisdiction.

But that was not enough. We had to have bombs. How many bombs went off in Quebec before the minister decided to take action? There had to be murder attempts. We had to find dynamite across Quebec. There had to be murders. There were marches in Saint-Nicolas, demonstrations by mayors and public pressure. Some innocent people were injured. Members will also recall that young Daniel Desrochers was killed in that gang war.

I remember very well that one day I asked the minister what he was waiting for to legislate. He kept saying there was no rush and that no legislation was necessary. The same day, we had six incidents connected with the biker war. Bombs exploded, someone was killed, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a restaurant in Quebec City. Dynamite was found in Longeuil. There was a shooting in Saint-Nicolas. And the minister said there was no rush.

Do you know what convinced the minister that perhaps he should do something? It was when we threatened to amend Bill C-17 which been languishing in the House for at least two or three years, to amend it and include anti-biker provisions. The minister decided to act.

More than that, after repeated questioning in the House, the minister decided to go and see for himself the problems they had in Quebec City. Fortunately, the air in Quebec City had a very salutary effect on the Minister of Justice, since he came back saying there was some urgency. There are those who fell from their horse on the road to Damascus and there are others who went to Quebec City to realize that action was urgently needed on the whole issue of the biker gang war in Quebec.

So the minister came back from Quebec City saying this could not go on, a situation where people stayed home because they were afraid of being shot, because they were afraid of the biker war that was going on in a number of municipalities in Quebec.

The problem is not recent. Back in 1982, a municipality, I think it was Sorel or Tracy, asked both levels of government to intervene, to pass legislation to help them fight what was starting to come to a head, in other words, all the bunkers being built and all the organized crime connected with all this.

The government of the day failed to act, and today's government, the Liberal government opposite, was not doing anything either. It took the members of the Bloc Quebecois, who are here solely to look after Quebec's interests, to make them understand that there was a problem and that immediate action was required.

As I said earlier, we worked together to help the government get the bill passed as quickly as possible, in view of the fact that everyone knows elections are in the wings. We need only listen to the Prime Minister and his wife if we have any doubt at all. However, what surprises me today is that the Minister of Justice says this is just a first step.

We are delighted the Minister of Justice has taken this course, as we have been pointing it out since 1995. We would have liked a bill that went further in fighting crime, but we accept the bill as it is. We will pass it in the hope that we can someday amend it as we would like in order to reach the goal we set ourselves.

The Minister of Justice says it is a first step, a first stage. I asked the minister why, since he said that it was a first stage, a first step, he did not decide to go further. Quite candidly he told me that he will continue to look into this matter and see what he can do. Finally, he does not know what to do as the second, third and fourth stages.

I encourage him to reread the entire private member's bill my colleague from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve introduced. I also suggest he reread the letters I wrote him in 1995 providing certain definitions in order to get to the leaders. Perhaps then the Minister of Justice will include a second stage, which we will soon have in another legislature. I hope that the Bloc Quebecois will be as strong then in order to defend Quebec's interests. I expect the minister will continue to move in the direction of the claims we made in this matter.

I can tell you right off two points the minister should consider for the second stage: the leaders and money laundering. On three occasions today, I asked the justice minister, who says that his bill goes directly after gang leaders, to show me where in Bill C-95 I could find something that dealt directly with gang leader. On three occasions he answered that it did so in a global way, that the bill had to be looked at in a global way. The minister never told me precisely where to look, and I will tell you why. It is because there is nothing in this bill which really deals with gang leaders. True, it is a step forward; true, it gives greater powers to the police; true, these are things the Bloc Quebecois had been demanding; true, we are satisfied and happy, but this bill does not go as far as we would have liked it to go.

I would invite the minister not to misinform the public, but to tell what is truly in the bill; one thing that is definitely not in it is provisions dealing directly with gang leaders.

Among the definitions that the minister has put in this bill, there are certainly good ones. This is the first time that a criminal organization and an association have been defined. These are things that we have been asking for in the House since 1995, and we were told that it was not appropriate, that it could not be done.

Of course, we are very happy to find that in a bill. This is a step forward. The Bloc Quebecois has helped the government, has contributed to the drafting of a new provision that had never been seen in Canada. Thanks to the Bloc Quebecois and its repeated representations, the government was convinced to proceed. We are very happy about that.

However, although a gang and an association have been defined, the provision is drafted in such a way that it is still related to an individual, to the committing of a crime. We know full well that it is not the gang leaders who do the heavy work. It is not the leaders who set the bombs that exploded. It is not the leaders who gunned down an individual. It is not the leaders who threw a Molotov cocktail in the restaurant in Quebec City or who hid the dynamite sticks in Longueuil. It is not the leaders, but people who work for them and who get orders from them. How can we catch the leaders if the bill only helps us catch those who do the work and not those who order it?

On three occasions, the minister has been unable to answer this question, simply because the Bloc Quebecois is right. This bill does not reach all the way up to the leaders, and something will have to be done about that very soon. If we are to put an end to this plague, we must deal not only with the ordinary members, but also with the leaders.

Another issue that would have been very easy for the Minister of Justice to address in the bill, as we repeatedly asked him, is money laundering. As you know, Canada has the dubious honour of being the G-7 country where the most money is laundered every year.

According to the statistics and to judges and law enforcement officers, it is estimated that between $30 billion and $60 billion is laundered in Canada every year. Some judges say $60 billion, while law enforcement officers say between $30 billion and $40 billion, based on how much they have seized, which represents about10 per cent of all the money laundered in Canada. Given that they seize approximately $3.5 billion, $4 billion or $5 billion per year,

they estimate money laundering to represent approximately $30 billion, $40 billion or $50 billion.

But regardless of the exact amount, even it were only $20 billion per year, as my hon. colleague said earlier, this is about as much as Canada's annual deficit. It is a awful lot of money.

To cover all the bases and provide a comprehensive solution to the problem of biker gangs, organized crime and money laundering, provisions dealing with these specific issues could have been included in Bill C-95. For instance, the production and distribution of $1,000 bills could have been prohibited. Canada may be the only country in the world where such large denominations are used. According to our information, no country in the world has banknotes worth as much as $1,000. As we know it is not every John Doe that walks around with a wad of $1,000 notes in his pocket.

My notebook, here, has less than 30 pages, but if it were a wad of $1,000 notes, I would have $30,000 in my hand. It is easy to carry, to pass from hand to hand. Money laundering is easy. We could simply prohibit that. It would have been very easy to include in Bill C-95 a provision about that. It would have been easy also to include in Bill C-95 provisions requiring financial institutions to report any dubious transaction of $10,000 and more. It would have been easy also to require casinos, travel agencies or any other groups which are paid or see carried about huge sums of money of $10,000 and more, to report such facts.

One judge told me that, because of the current state of the legislation, he was unable, despite the bank's co-operation, to find guilty of fraud an individual who went to the bank to deposit a hockey bag full of money. He came in with the bag which he put on the counter saying he wanted to deposit some money. The bag held about $1 million in $50, $100 and $1,000 notes.

Even if the bank did co-operate and even if the police did its work, there are so many loopholes in the Canadian legislation that the judge was not in a position to convict this man. Everybody goes around with bags full of dollars. Everybody does that in Canada. Oh, sure.

It is total nonsense. It makes so little sense that on the very day when we are dealing with Bill C-95, we read this headline in a newspaper: Thanks to the weakness of our legislation, Canada is a paradise for traffickers. This news report says exactly what we have been repeating for two or three years: our legislation is ineffective.

The report says that the Canadian legislation on the laundering of money has so many loopholes that it is extremely difficult to enforce. The Canadian police, and even those the justice minister brags about meeting a couple times, are dreaming of the day when they will have half or even only the quarter of the provisions existing in the United States.

In Canada, we have to prove beyond any doubt that the money is the proceeds of criminal activities. In the United States, the onus is on the accused. Why did the minister not take the opportunity, with Bill C-95, to amend this legislation, when the government can count on the co-operation of all parties in the House to have legislation with teeth, and legislation that would meet the demands of many groups and political parties, like the Bloc Quebecois or the police association?

I will conclude by saying that this is a step in the right direction, but I would have liked the minister to listen more to the official opposition, the Bloc Quebecois. He did not agree 100 per cent with the Bloc, which would have been hard for him to do in this election period. However, I think the Bloc Quebecois made some remarkable progress here and will continue to fight and will still be here, after the next election, to ask the government for some amendments to this legislation, in order to meet the needs and the demands of Quebecers in this area.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, what I understand is that they are introducing the first phase because they do not know what to propose in the further phases. The minister has just said so. I understand.

What I do not understand however is when he says that it was quick and effective. Again, I remind members that we have been asking the government to introduce this bill for two years now.

The same thing can be said about Bill C-17. The minister spoke about it three or four times. I remind him that this bill had been introduced back in 1994. The Bloc Quebecois had to threaten the government to propose anti-biker amendments in order to get the minister to bring that bill back to the House and have it passed.

There is another point I want to raise with the minister. The government of Quebec and the Bloc Quebecois raised on several occasions the issue of crime proceeds and money laundering in Canada. Again today, a newspaper mentioned that legislation on money laundering is very difficult to implement because there are so many loopholes. Reference is made to Canadian policemen; they must be the ones the minister says he has met several times. I also met several chiefs of police and policemen in Quebec, who told me almost the opposite of what the minister has been telling this House for the last little while, in particular about the legislation on money laundering, about which they were almost unanimous. I have even talked to judges and attorneys general of Canada. So, we read in the paper this morning that the police in Canada would love to have half or even one quarter of the measures that exist in similar legislation in the United States.

As for the whole issue of anti-biker or anti-gang or anti-crime in general, we in the Bloc Quebecois have said repeatedly that stricter legislation is needed on money laundering.

I realize that Bill C-95 contains provisions concerning the seizure of real property or other property. I know that Bill C-95 is a step forward. However, this is nothing compared with what chiefs of police have been asking for years in the way of legislation on money laundering.

While the minister was at it, why did he not add some amendments on money laundering, in order to make this activity more difficult in Canada? Now we are known as the drug trafficker's paradise. We already knew that Canada was a tax haven for money laundering. The minister should realize there is some urgency in this case as well, and even the Bloc Quebecois would have liked to see him pass legislation to deal with this.

As far as money laundering is concerned, when we talk to the police, they say that between 20 and 30 billion dollars are laundered annually. A judge of the Quebec Superior Court told me it could be as much as 50 or 60 billion dollars.

Again, considering the urgent nature of these demands which, I think, we made very clear to the government, the same way we did in the case of anti-biker legislation, I want to ask the minister why, when he was working on this bill, he did not introduce legislation to make it well nigh impossible to launder money, an activity that is today a disaster for the economy? And tomorrow it will be even worse for Quebec, for a sovereign Quebec, but for Canada as well.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, first of all, I want to reassure Reform members. Everyone in the House knows that the distinct society motion agreed to has never been used to pass any legislation whatsoever. It is a meaningless motion, and Quebec as a distinct society is in no way at issue in Bill C-95. In this regard, I must say that the minister is right. The problem of gangs does not exist only in Quebec, but is spreading and is also very present in Ontario and in the other provinces of English Canada.

That having been said, my other comment concerns the answers the minister has given to a number of questions. Several times, he said it was unacceptable that people should be afraid to walk on the street in towns in Quebec, that, in Canada, mothers should be afraid to let their children go outside, and so on.

I am very pleased that the minister has said this in the House, and that he has also admitted that it was urgent to act in such a situation, given that, I remind you, we have been asking the minister to act for two years now. I congratulate him on having seen that what the Bloc Quebecois was calling for made good sense and on introducing legislation along the lines of what we have pointing out for at least two years.

But what strikes me is that the minister said several times that this is a first step. It is a step in the direction of what police forces have been calling for. It is a first step. He has repeated this at least ten times since oral question period.

My first question, and later on I will have another, is that, while they were drafting such a bill, why did the minister not take more than that one step?

Why did the minister not go a bit further regarding leaders, among other things, and regarding the demands made by Quebec City and certain mayors as well that the minister met with? I am very happy that he met these demands because, once again, it was the Bloc Quebecois that really backed him into a corner, so he decided to go to Quebec City. The air in that city did him good, because when he came back it was an urgent matter. Before he left for Quebec City, there was no rush. So this is an extremely important point. The air in Quebec City did the Minister of Justice a lot of good.

Given that he himself admits it is a first step, and it seems to be a small one because he has mentioned it so many times, why did the minister not decide to take more steps in the fight against crime?

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, what the minister just said about harsher sentences, bail and peace bonds clearly applies to gang leaders. That is not the issue.

The issue is: Where, in the bill, are the additional powers given police authorities so they can get to the leaders of these biker gangs or criminal organizations?

If it makes the other side react, it is usually because we hit a nerve.

Once these leaders are grabbed by police, they will indeed be subject to the provisions on harsher penalties, bail and peace bonds. I agree and I have no problem with that. However, the bill does not give police officers more power to go after these leaders.

Let me go back to the example provided earlier by the minister himself, the case of the Desrochers boy. It is not the leaders who went out and put the bomb under the vehicle that exploded. The leader simply told one of his henchmen: "Mr. X is starting to get on my nerves. I want him out of the picture. Do what you have to do". The leader gives the order to his henchmen who then go out and set off the bomb. However, under this bill, it is the person who sets off the bomb who will face the harsher penalty, who will have more difficulty getting bail, who will be slapped with a peace bond or what have you. It will not be the leaders.

I will ask the question for the third time, and I promise it will be the last time. If the minister does not mention the specific clause, then it is because the clause does not exist. I will be convinced of that beyond a reasonable doubt. Will the minister tell me exactly where in the bill are these additional powers given the police to go after the leaders? Because if we do not go after the leaders, we may end up having more hit men in jail, but the leaders will always be able to find others to do the job for them.

For the last time, I ask the minister: Where, in this bill, are the provisions that specifically target gang leaders? All the provisions on offenses clearly stipulate that they must have committed the offence. So before the minister tells me which specific clause of the bill provides for such powers, he must answer this question: Does he agree that those who commit such offenses are usually not the leaders, but their henchmen?

If the minister answers yes to that question, maybe he can tell me where in the bill are the specific provisions targeting gang leaders.

[Criminal Code, April 21st, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, I think the minister either did not understand my question or could not find the clause.

I realize that according to the bill-and now I am going beyond clause 1, because this goes further than clause 1-the individual must have committed a criminal offence. As for "possession without lawful excuse of an explosive substance", we do not see the leaders going around with sticks of dynamite in the trunks of their cars. And as for "possession in association with a criminal organization", the person who manufactures explosive substances or has them in his possession is not one of the leaders either.

Among all the offences the minister included in Bill C-95, not one has a direct impact on the leaders, not one, otherwise the minister would have told me which clause. Even if we consider the definitions at the very beginning under "criminal organization", it says "having as one of its primary activities the commission of indictable offence"-we know that the dirty work is not done by the leaders. We do not see the mafia bosses installing dynamite. Neither do we see the leaders of biker gangs installing dynamite and doing all these things that are harmful to society.

I do not understand the hon. member opposite who says it is not enough, who says he has the support of Canadian chiefs of police and all police forces in Canada and in Quebec and who tells me that in Quebec, people are very satisfied with this. Sure, we are very satisfied, but once the minister got going, he should have done more. It is not true that all chiefs of police and all police forces say that this bill mainly affects the leaders. This is a misrepresentation of the truth, because this is not what is happening in Quebec. It is not the opinion of the people who commented on this bill.

I realize this is a step forward, but that is not enough. I again want to ask the minister to show me which clause in the bill refers specifically to the leaders, to those who are responsible for the biker gangs, those who do the planning, who give the orders for jobs in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada.

The minister said in the House earlier that he met the mother of young Desrochers. According to this bill, the police is given additional powers to carry out investigations and to try and find out who installed the bomb and why. Unless I am mistaken, the person who ordered this particular job, the leader who was behind all this is not affected by Bill C-95, and correct me if I am wrong. So I am asking the minister where in Bill C-95 we can find the provisions that affect leaders.

Even so the bill is a step forward. Before, there was nothing. Thanks to the Bloc Quebecois, the government decided to act. The minister says he has been working on this for 18 months, but we have been asking questions for at least two years about this issue. He said there was no problem, that the police had all the elements they needed to conduct their investigations, and so forth.

And then all of a sudden, he told us he had been examining this aspect for 18 months, probably very secretly, because he never told us he was looking into this. He even said that the Bloc Quebecois was mistaken and that it wanted to make political capital with an issue like this. By the way, I think it is odd we are considering this bill one week before an election is called.

So again I want to ask the Minister of Justice who he is very knowledgeable on the bill before us, to tell me exactly where this clause is. I also have legal training. I am a lawyer, and I will understand. Let him say which clause it is. I see no clause that deals specifically with leaders. And this is one of the weaknesses of Bill C-95.

I am very anxious to hear the minister say specifically which clause concerns the leaders. Is it in a definition? Is it under a particular offence? Where is it? I wish someone would tell me exactly where we can find the clause that affects the leaders. After that, I may have another question for him.