WHEN ORGANIZED CRIME HITS HOME

They Kill And Deal And Pimp -- So The Fact They Were Implicated In A Raid
On B.C.'s Legislature Is A Big Deal

'I want to make this very clear: The search warrants that police executed
at the B.C. legislature did not involve any elected politicians in B.C." --
RCMP Sergeant John Ward.

Okay, clear enough. But while the politicians might be of no interest to
the police in this matter, they are likely to be of great interest to the
voters.

How could it be otherwise? When a major probe into organized crime winds up
leading to ministerial offices, our elected representatives can't help but
be involved politically -- if only because serious questions about the
government's judgment are raised.

The single most important asset we have as a civil society is trust in the
institutions empowered to mediate social and economic relationships.

Belief in the integrity of government makes possible the stability
necessary for the functioning of our economy. It's what sets our political
culture apart from those where bribes, kickbacks and intimidation are accepted.

Which is why the United Nations identifies the penetration of governments
by organized crime as the primary barrier to democracy, the rule of law and
those honest business practices that investors demand and upon which
sustainable economic development depends.

The Organization of American States, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, the World Customs Organization, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe,
the Commonwealth and the Group of Eight have all expressed similar worries.

So when British Columbians open their newspapers to stories about police
officers leaving the legislature precinct with boxes of evidence and
alluding openly to the drug trade and to organized crime, it is hardly
surprising that it doesn't exactly resonate as politically insignificant.

Let's try to be as clear as the RCMP. There is indeed no place for any
presumption of guilt. Unfounded speculation about the particulars should be
dismissed for the idle gossip it is. Nobody associated with the government
has been charged. If charges are eventually be laid, then a court is the
only proper place to adjudicate presumed innocence.

However, in the pragmatic world of realpolitik, there is no evading the
public optics that are now a major component in what's just happened.

Regardless of what conclusion the special prosecutor finally reaches, it
takes place in the purely legal world.

What happens in the political arena is something else entirely. And there
is no avoiding the cruel fact that when detectives investigating organized
crime show up at offices close to some of our most important cabinet
ministers, the public does have legitimate cause for concern.

Which is why Premier Gordon Campbell miscalculated in giving the appearance
of a guy who thought the matter of insufficient gravity to interrupt his
Hawaiian vacation.

Frankly, I think the premier should have been heading home on the next
available flight, simply to demonstrate resolute leadership. Because let's
also be clear about what we're really discussing when the term "organized
crime" enters a conversation, even as an indirect association.

We're talking about the kind of people who pimp children on the streets;
who drive a global expansion of web-based child pornography; who recruit
teenagers into a dreadful bondage of drugs and prostitution.

We're talking about the kind of people who will torch a Winnipeg police
officer's car and then fire-bomb her house twice; who murder off-duty
prison guards; who assassinate crime reporters like Veronica Guerin in
Ireland; who attempt to murder reporters like Sergi Zolvkin for writing
about the nexus of organized crime and official corruption in Russia, or Le
Devoir's organized crime reporter Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, shot three times
in his newsroom in 1973 and, more recently, reporter Michel Auger shot in
the parking lot at Le Journal de Montreal after writing about bike gangs.

We're talking about the kind of people who gun down the competition in the
streets, or in nightclubs full of patrons, or simply tie them up and
execute them in the trunk of a car -- a total of 65 gangland assassinations
are thought to have occurred in Vancouver since 1990 according to one CBC
report.

We're talking about illicit drug traffic that tops $10 billion a year and
was responsible for 222 illicit drugs deaths in B.C. in 2001 -- 90 of them
in Vancouver. This trade is dominated by Asian organized crime gangs that
operate extensively in B.C.

These assertions aren't my personal opinion. They come right out of the
last seven annual reports of the Criminal Intelligence Service.
Furthermore, the most recent warn that there is now evidence of growing
collaborations between organized crime and terrorist organizations -- if
you care to distinguish between them.

The rise of organized crime, to quote one federal solicitor general, is now
"a national problem that threatens public safety and erodes the well-being
of Canadians."

Sergeant Ward called it "a cancer eating away at the social and moral
fabric of British Columbia," while the UN says attempts by organized crime
to penetrate and compromise legitimate government promises to be the
political challenge of the coming century.

So I accept with relief the RCMP's statement that no elected politicians
are the object of this investigation. Actually, I hope for everyone's sake
that the investigation finds there was no wrongdoing by anyone.

From that point of view, the police comment is a useful reminder that in
this politically charged province we should all curb the tendency to leap
to conclusions on the basis of ideologically motivated desire rather than
the available facts.

But there is an investigation. Police said it was linked initially to
illegal drugs. The trail apparently did lead them to organized and
commercial crime. And to the very threshold of the government's inner
sanctum. So it's fair to wonder what the heck is going on.

I think the premier should have been here shoring up public confidence, not
low-bridging it in Hawaii, as though police raids on the legislature were
some trivial everyday matter better dealt with by minor appointed
officials. Because however it turns out later, right now it ain't minor --
and political leadership means demonstrating that you know the difference.