OUR WAR AGAINST INTERNATIONAL CRIME WILL BE EXPENSIVE

Before governments, economists and other institutions were promoting
globalization, organized criminals were networking and moving their
illicit goods rapidly across borders.

Experience has made them superb at diversifying quickly to meet demand and
ferreting out locations where the cost of doing business is the lowest.

They're involved in drugs, money-laundering, weapons sales, people
smuggling, prostitution, reselling stolen vehicles, counterfeiting money
and credit cards, even toxic-waste.

American security agencies said in a report released last December that the
rapid rise in international crime due to the end of the Cold War,
technological advances and globalization pose a significant threat to
democratic governments and free-market economies.

The International Monetary Fund estimates of the size of their illegal
businesses could be somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion US each
year. That's the equivalent of two to five per cent of the value of all
goods and services legally produced throughout the world each year.

So serious is the concern about transnational crime that in December,
Canada, along with 122 member states of the United Nations plus the
European Community, signed the Palermo Convention that will increase
cooperation on investigating and prosecuting organized, transnational
criminals.

Since then, Canada and 79 other states plus the European Community have
signed a protocol on investigating and prosecuting groups that traffic in
people, and Canada and 76 others have signed the protocol on gangs involved
in transporting illegal migrants.

You might not think that organized crime affects you -- a recent survey
showed that most Canadians don't think that it does. But consider that a
third of all vehicles stolen in Canada are shipped out of the country.

Think about the Fujian migrants who washed up on our coast in the last
couple of years having paid up to $50,000 US per person to be smuggled into
North America or the thousands of Mexican migrants who pay "coyotes" to get
them across the U.S. border.

Think about the drug-related crimes and the heroin and crack cocaine
addicts on the Downtown Eastside.

Until now, combatting transnational criminals has been virtually
impossible, says Dimitri Vlassis, a crime prevention officer with the
United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention in Vienna.

Vlassis, who spoke here at a weekend conference on international criminal
law, says it's only because of globalization -- legitimate globalization --
that the Palermo Convention is possible. And, he says, Canada has been one
of the countries pushing for this.

At this point, however, it's only fair to point out Canada's important role
in getting this convention signed is not so much out of altruism as it is
preservation of its own relationship with other countries.

Canada is seen by some countries and by some within the country as having a
pretty dismal record at dealing with organized crime.

A White House report on transnational crime released in December, singled
out Canada as a key venue for gangs -- particularly Chinese gangs --
engaged in credit card fraud, heroin trafficking, illegal migration and
software piracy.

One reason for that is a 1999 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that
determined police officers have no authority to breach laws in the line of
duty. This has resulted in cases thrown out of court because evidence is
inadmissible and many undercover operations into people smuggling, hate
crimes, gun trafficking and terrorism halted because it was impossible to
carry on.

On Tuesday, members of Parliament are expected to vote on a bill to remedy
that. It's a bill that senior justice department officials view as a
possible template for developing countries that sign the UN convention.

It's the bill that would give undercover police the right to act as criminals.

Richard Mosley, the assistant deputy minister of the federal justice
department, assures me there are safeguards in place. The RCMP would have
to get permission from the federal solicitor-general to designate specific
officers for undercover work. In Vancouver, the chief constable would have
to get permission from the provincial solicitor-general.

What those designated officers do with that immunity would only be reviewed
annually by the responsible minister.

There's another catch. Senior officers would be able to designate without
getting permission if there's an emergency.

And they would be able to give permission to police officers from other
countries -- for example, an FBI agent investigating gang activity in
Washington that crosses into B.C. -- to break Canadian laws.

Should we trust all senior officers to make a decision like that without
oversight? And more importantly, should we trust police at all with
immunity from prosecution for crimes committed even if it means a bigger
crime might be stopped?

Designated officers would be allowed to break a whole slew of laws from
what Mosley calls "banal ones" such as registering under a false name at a
hotel to being able to deal illegal drugs or traffic in contraband, whether
it's guns or people.

The bill does put some limits on the crimes designated officers can commit.
They couldn't, for example, blow up buildings. But they could damage
property as long as the owner of the property is notified that she or he
can sue the police for damages. Designated officers are also specifically
forbidden from doing anything that would cause bodily harm -- this includes
sexual assault.

On the surface, limits seem to be a good thing. But Gerry Ferguson -- a
University of Victoria criminal law professor who has serious reservations
about the bill -- points out what those limitations would do is put
undercover cops at even more at risk.

When crime bosses test the loyalty of new recruits, Ferguson figures
they'll be smart enough to ask them to do something that cops are
specifically forbidden to do.

Mosley agrees it's a problem that could make undercover work more
dangerous, but says spelling out the limits are "a matter of public policy"
- -- a policy he says most senior police officers support.

Stephen Owen -- Liberal MP for Vancouver Quadra, justice committee member,
human rights defender, civil libertarian, former ombudsman, former deputy
attorney general -- says organized crime is such a problem that countries
need "extraordinary tools" to fight it.

Owen defends the bill as "a cautious, deliberate approach" that has "lots
of accountabilities," including a total review of the bill in three years.

I want police and the courts to stop the monstrous gangs who annually
abduct, trade and enslave an estimated 400 million people -- two million of
whom are children headed for prostitution or for the harvesting of their
organs. I want the illegal trade in weapons stopped. I want cars not to be
stolen here for shipment and sale abroad.

But, I'm uncomfortable with giving blanket immunity to police officers to
commit criminal acts even if it appears to be for the right reasons.

I'm uncomfortable with the notion of, 'We're the police, so trust us,' even
though I know that all cops aren't criminals in waiting and that most
police officers are committed to serving the public good.

But police go bad. The current This Magazine notes that between 1996 and
2000, 29 police in Quebec alone were convicted of criminal offences -- 11
of those were cases where the cops were tied to gangs.

It seems certain that this bill will become law given the Liberal
government's majority. In which case, we can only hope that Stephen Owen is
right that these are extraordinary circumstances and the safeguards are
sufficient.

But there's also more at stake here. Canadian government officials want to
offer this as a template for developing countries to investigate and
prosecute transnational gangs.

And if you have doubts about how the law will be (ab)used in Canada, just
imagine what could happen in corruption-ridden or gang-infested countries
like India, China, Malaysia, Russia and Albania if bad cops have the chance
to make their activities legal.