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Ottawa steps up fight against Cannabis, calls it organized crime
By admin | October 7, 2010
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/843768
Published On Wed Aug 04 2010
Tonda MacCharles Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA—The Conservative government has quietly boosted police powers to target gambling, drug trafficking and prostitution activities by organized criminal gangs.
New regulations approved in mid-July but published today in the Canada Gazette designate as “serious offences” a series of crimes that do not necessarily garner five years or more in jail.
The move will allow police and prosecutors to more easily use tools they already have to target large-scale criminal operations.
Under the new regulations, police will be able to more easily obtain wiretaps and orders such as peace bonds, block bail or parole eligibility, seize assets and seek stiffer sentences. The criminal code defines as “organized” crime gangs those cases involving three or more people acting together in a criminal venture.
The offences now designated as “serious” are: keeping a common gaming or betting house; betting, pool-selling and book-making; offences related to lotteries and games of chance; “cheating while playing a game or in holding the stakes for a game or in betting”; keeping a common bawdy-house; and a series of drug trafficking, importing and production offences.
For the purposes of investigations and prosecutions, the regulations also designate trafficking in barbiturates, anabolic steroids and prescription drugs like tranquilizers, as well as trafficking in marijuana or hashish in amounts less than 3 kilograms, as “serious.”
“Such crimes are often considered signature activities of organized crime,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, as he announced the regulations in Montreal.
Nicholson cited federal estimates that there are 750 organized crime groups operating across Canada.
Nicholson received an immediate endorsement from provincial police representatives in Quebec, but was met with skepticism from his political opponents.
Liberal critic Mark Holland said he wanted to study the regulations before commenting directly on them. “In organized crime, we can always do better, of course.”
But he denounced the Conservatives for moving on measures without subjecting them to proper parliamentary study.
“This is about changing the channel. This is about raw politics,” said Holland.
“What I detest and what I think Canadians see through is when you have a government that just whips up policy in the middle of the night and throws it out as a diversion to their other political problems.”
Holland slammed the Conservatives for shifting about $5 billion to $8 billion of prison construction costs onto the provinces, slashing support to crime prevention programs to $19.3 million in 2008 from $57 million in 2005 and for cutting funding for victims of crime services.
Holland also derided Treasury Board president Stockwell day for relying on so-called “unreported crime” statistics to justify an overall $10 billion to $13 billion in new prison spending.
“Do they propose to lock up people who haven’t been criminally charged?” he said.
“The Conservatives prefer wild, out-of-control spending to fund their ideological pursuits even when taxpayers are forced to finance the largest deficits in Canadian history,” Holland said.
Actual gazette article at: http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2010/2010-08-04/html/sor-dors161-eng.html
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