The state of organized crime : Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights

THE STATE OF ORGANIZED CRIME Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights Dave MacKenzie, M. P. Chair MARCH 2012 41st PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION Published under the authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons SPEAKER’S PERMISSION Reproduction of the proceedings of the House of Commons and its Committees, in whole or in part and in any medium, is hereby permitted provided that th [...] In addition to its organized crime study, the Committee has also heard related testimony on Bill C-14, an Act to amend the Criminal Code (organized crime and protection of justice system participants)2 and as part of a study on declaring certain groups to be criminal organizations.3 The Committee also benefited from testimony on the issue of “gangsterism” heard during the 1st Session of the 39th P [...] As a result, in 2002, Bill C-249 amended the definition of a “criminal organization” in three main ways by: 1) reducing the number of people required to constitute a criminal organization from five to three; 2) removing the requirement that at least one of the members be involved in committing crimes for the organization within the past five years; and 3) broadening the scope of the offences which [...] These additional measures included: the creation of specialized police task forces; the participation of different police agencies; lengthy police investigations that targeted whole criminal organizations; the use of civil infiltration agents; the creation of specialized teams of prosecutors, such as the Proceeds of Crime Bureau in 1996 and the Organized Crime Bureau in 2000; the const [...] As a result, policy makers, the media, the legal system and the public can be misled.55 The Committee was urged to look at the Statistics Canada report, Criminal Victimization in Canada,56 as a more accurate measure of the amount of criminal activity in Canada.