HOLD ON, MR. MENARD

As the appalling spate of brazen shootings and threats against foes of
organized crime grows, Quebecers have had enough. Such intimidation is
intolerable and that government has to show a strong determination to stop
it. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Excellent.

The challenge for us a society, however, is to avoid channeling our
collective outrage into a demand for the sort of radical, quick-fix
solution that Quebec Security Minister Serge Menard is now offering.
Decisions made in a climate of near hysteria have a way of turning out poorly.

Mr. Menard and the Montreal Urban Community's police chief, Michel
Sarrazin, have been exploiting public indignation over the shooting of
Michel Auger, Le Journal de Montreal's ace crime reporter, to whip up
support for a legislative cure. Ottawa's existing law, they say, handcuffs
Quebec law enforcement because it fails to make membership in a criminal
gang illegal. If membership were punishable by imprisonment, they say that
authorities would be able to fill the jails with bikers and other
drug-traffickers.

Skepticism is in order. Already, under a 1997 change in federal law that
Quebec had sought, anyone who commits crimes on behalf of a criminal gang
gets an extra-harsh penalty; this measure, however, has not been as
effective as Quebec had hoped. It's hard to see how a new change outlawing
membership in such a gang - as distinct from committing crimes for it -
will be that much easier to prosecute. Gangs would become more clandestine,
destroying membership lists and to ceasing to distribute insignia for
jackets. Police would not be that far ahead.

Of course, since barring membership in a gang would violate the charter
guarantee of freedom of association, Parliament would have to invoke the
notwithstanding clause. That's repugnant in any circumstance. But in this
case the small practical bang extracted from such a huge moral buck would
also make such a law silly.

It's ironic that it is a Parti Quebecois government that is seeking such
legislation. This is the same PQ that so often recalls Ottawa's use in 1970
of the War Measures Act as both needless overkill and as an assault on
human rights.

While Mr. Menard's campaign tries to deflect public anger on the crime
issue away from the provincial government and toward Ottawa, the cause of
ineffective anti-gang efforts firmly lies in Quebec.

The real problem is with the quality of policing and prosecuting. That's
partly because budget cuts have gone too far in shrinking the ranks of cops
and prosecutors. And, as the devastating Poitras report showed in the
Surete du Quebec's case, it's partly because professionalism and policing
do not always go hand in hand.

In the 1970s, a Quebec-government probe of organized crime proved useful.
Instead of now trying to wrest a useless tool from Ottawa, the province
should set up a new inquiry. Much has changed. The inquiry would explore
the evolving nature of today's gangs. It would examine why costly police
work - like the Wolverine squad - has failed. And it would see what laws
and techniques other democracies are using to advantage.

This is a time to weigh the complex problem of organized crime cooly. It is
not the time for political solutions that are both facile and phony.