CANADIANS CONDONE LAWBREAKING BY UNDERCOVER POLICE, POLL FINDS

OTTAWA -- Canadians want a crackdown on organized crime and
overwhelmingly support officers breaking the law to infiltrate gangs,
a new federal government poll indicates.

The national survey, conducted for the Department of Public Safety,
also reveals that seven out of 10 Canadians want improvements in the
federal government's current level of effort to combat 'organized crime.'

48 per cent of Canadians responded that organized crime had an impact
on them personally and identified drug trafficking as the crime with
the highest level of correlation to the criminal activity. More than
half (54 per cent) say that members of motorcycle gangs should be
prosecuted based on participation, regardless of whether they have
committed a crime.

"The majority of respondents believe that undercover police officers
should be permitted to commit certain crimes in order to infiltrate
gangs -- 40 per cent strongly agree and 35 per cent somewhat agree,"
said the survey's executive summary.

But Alan Borovoy, the general counsel for the Canadian Civil
Liberties Association, wondered if the Conservative government was in
the process of preparing legislation giving police greater powers and
was using the survey to create the need for new laws. He warned that
the issue is not as black and white as presented by the survey and
that police already have sweeping powers to battle crime.

Conducted between March 15 and 29, involving 1,337 telephone
interviews with adults aged 18 and over, the poll has a margin of
error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. It
cost taxpayers $47,650.