ONE STEP CLOSER TO A POLICE STATE

Claiming to be fighting a valiant war on crime, governments around the
world -- but especially in Canada -- are actually fighting an escalating
war on people. This includes Ottawa's draconian "money-laundering"
regulations. If you send $15,000 in cash to pay for your grandmother's hip
replacement at a U.S. hospital, your name will go on the list of potential
money launderers. Privacy? Freedom? Guilt? Innocence? Forget it. Under some
definition, sending cash into the U.S. health-care system probably is money
laundering.

Another manifestation of Ottawa's war on people at the expense of
individual freedom is Bill C-24, a law to fight organized crime. Introduced
last April, C-24 whipped through final third reading on Wednesday, just
before the MPs fled Ottawa with their pockets stuffed with the proceeds of
organized politics.

The new law vastly expands government power and gives police the right to
break the law to enforce the law. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association
has called parts of the legislation "evil," but that didn't phase the
government. People who tried to follow C-24 on its rapid run through the
Commons say it is as bad in the final version as it was the day it was
introduced.

Provincial and local governments have their own power-expansion ambitions
and are more than ready to hand police fresh authority to stomp on basic
rights. Ontario last month reintroduced its own infamous organized crime
legislation, noted mostly for giving government the ability to seize the
assets of innocent people if prosecutors think the assets were acquired,
directly or indirectly, through some organized criminal activity.

That these laws go overboard and trample on people's rights nobody
seriously doubts. Oddly, though, it's not until the laws and regulations
are on the books that people begin to realize how much power governments
have taken and how many rights have been lost. The federal money laundering
law, which sets up a new federal money laundering agency to monitor every
transaction over $10,000, passed last year with plenty of warning. But now
that the law is in place, law societies are calling for amendments. There
is also growing recognition the law will do nothing to stop organized crime.

It's a little late for these concerns. Banks, investment houses and others
are also trying to fight regulations that would impose massive
paper-pushing and monitoring costs -- estimated at up to $100-million --
and turn bankers, lawyers and accountants into government spies on their
customers. It's not a police state yet, but the laws are in place to create
one should anyone get the urge.

The common thread running through these money-laundering and other
anti-crime laws around the world leads straight to Washington and the most
futile crime crusade since prohibition: the war on drugs. Hundreds of
billions of dollars, global prosecution regimes and out of control police
actions are doing little to stop the drug trade. But they are lining the
pockets of bureaucrats and police workers and laying the groundwork for
institutionalized state control.

The international rhetorical campaign against money laundering, organized
crime and so-called "gang" laws, has escalated into what one legal
specialist called a "regulatory jihad." The objective is to enroll the
whole world in the U.S. drug war. The enrolment technique is to grossly
exaggerate the crime. Ottawa's money laundering legislation was adopted on
the grounds that somewhere between $5-billion and $17-billion in crime
proceeds were being washed through Canada every year. Those bogus numbers
were concocted by a consultant who defined money laundering as an "economic
crime." It's a handy catch-all that included insurance fraud
($2.5-billion), cellular phone fraud ($650-million), stock market fraud
($3-billion), telemarketing fraud ($4-billion). Even if these numbers are
accurate, and they look wildly implausible, most of the crimes have nothing
to do with money laundering or the drug industry.

The New Yorker magazine estimated last year that the U.S. government spends
US$16-billion a year on the war on drugs. State and local governments
another US$24-billion. The result is two million people in prison, up from
750,000 a year ago. But the number of drug addicts has not changed.

Where do Canada's governments get such enthusiasm for joining this absurd
U.S. war -- and at such expense to Canadians' rights and protections? The
new laws expand police powers, break down the trust between bankers and
customers, and between lawyers and clients, and give governments new
authority to prosecute and harass innocent people. The U.S. war on drugs is
fast becoming a Canadian war on Canadians. And we don't even have a drug
problem worth worrying about.