QUEBEC TACKLES GANG-LAW CHANGES

Says Ottawa appears open to proposals for tough amendments

QUEBEC -- The Quebec government says it has found a way for Ottawa to outlaw
biker gangs such as the Hells Angels and Rock Machine without using the
constitution's notwithstanding clause to make an exception from the Charter
of Rights.

Retreating from its previous demand that the federal government should have
recourse to the notwithstanding clause, the Parti Quebecois government now
says the Criminal Code can simply be amended to allow the courts to declare
certain gangs to be criminal and to make membership in them a crime.

In Ottawa yesterday, Prime Minister Jean Chretien said that using the
so-called notwithstanding clause was not an option for the government.

However, PQ Justice Minister Linda Goupil said senior officials from the
federal justice and solicitor-general's departments appeared open to the
province's proposals for toughening anti-gang legislation at meeting in
Montreal yesterday.

Goupil said Ottawa should seek a rapid opinion from the Supreme Court of
Canada if it doubts the solidity of Quebec's proposal.

In the latest reaction to the gun attack last week on leading crime reporter
Michel Auger in Montreal, Goupil said she asked for a new definition of gang
membership.

Two or more people who conspire to commit a crime, and who belong to a
formal or informal criminal organization, would fall under the definition of
a gang and police would be able to round them up, she said.

The new definition would not contravene charter rights to freedom of
association, she added, and there would be no need to use the
notwithstanding clause to make it illegal to be a member of a criminal gang.

"We're asking that the law be more simple, that we can intervene quickly in
making a link between the criminal organization and the person," she said
following the meeting.

Goupil's statements represent a new twist in the Quebec government's
indignant response to the attack on Auger, now recovering from his wounds in
hospital, and the escalation of biker gang violence in Quebec over the past
six years.

Last week, PQ Public Security Minister Serge Menard, a prominent defence
lawyer before entering politics in 1994, said the notwithstanding clause
should be used if necessary to stem the crime wave.

Without being that specific, Premier Lucien Bouchard said last week that
Ottawa must go "much further" to allow Quebec to halt the gang war, which
has been marked by 151 murders, 13 disappearances and 170 attempted murders
since 1994.

Goupil said existing anti-gang legislation passed by Ottawa in 1997 has been
ineffectual, and not a single trial based on that law has resulted in a
conviction. She took direct aim at the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine,
reputedly the two leading gangs in car bombings, explosions and shootings
that have wracked the province in the last six years.

'We're asking that the law be more simple, that we can intervene quickly in
making a link between the criminal organization and the person.'