QUEBEC'S BIKER GANGS MUST BE REINED IN

OTTAWA -- ON WEDNESDAY, Montreal crime reporter Michel Auger was shot five
times in broad daylight in the parking lot of his employer, the Journal de
Montreal. Those shots are now about to reverberate on Parliament Hill.

Auger (who is not to be confused with the political columnist with the same
name) is Quebec's top crime reporter, a fearless veteran correspondent of
the bikers' wars who has spent his life on the receiving end of a constant
stream of death threats.

It is too early to tell which of Auger's many underworld enemies finally
tried to make good on the threats, but whoever held the gun might as well
have pointed it at motorcycle gangs.

Even before Auger was shot, Quebecers had reasons to be wary of the large
niche that gangs such as the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine have been
carving for themselves in the province's daily life.

It used to be that a trademark of Sicilian fiction was that it featured the
Mafia as part and parcel of the fabric of southern Italian society.

Now, in Quebec, bikers have become the stuff that novels and movies are
made of. They are the topic of two current bestsellers, as well as a
just-released commercial film called Hochelaga, with more to come.

But most Quebecers no longer need fiction to come into contact with the
bikers' world. The notion that they are mere bystanders, as organized crime
goes about its deadly business, has been shattered in a variety of ways.

Year after year, the harvest season takes on a more lethal meaning as armed
goons take over large sections of Quebec land for the lucrative growing of
marijuana.

Many farmers are too terrified to complain. Those who do live in fear of
retaliation.

Bloc Quebecois MP Yvan Loubier, whose Saint-Hyacinthe riding includes large
chunks of prime agricultural land, spent last fall under police protection
after he sounded the alarm about the violent goings-on in the fields.

In so doing, Loubier raised hackles within his own caucus. Some of his
colleagues would much rather he had kept his peace. It is not every
politician, or journalist for that matter, who has the stomach to take on
criminal gangs.

Bikers do not only harvest marijuana. They sell it and, as such, are the
main beneficiaries of Canada's reluctance to remove pot from the Criminal Code.

This has allowed motorcycle gangs to run the drug equivalent of a candy store.

Indeed, the association between bikers and marijuana has gone a long way to
soften their image in many young minds. And now, biker gangs have begun
flaunting the fact that they enjoy almost complete impunity.

Last month, Quebecers were surprised to hear that two of the province's
lead singers, Ginette Reno and Jean-Pierre Ferland, had performed at a
Hells Angels wedding. Pictures of Quebec diva Reno standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with various crime bosses made the front page of the
province's newspapers.

That was no accident. The Hells Angels had invited a reporter from the
tabloid Allo-Police to the wedding so as to have the event publicized.

The media furor had no sooner died down than Angels boss Maurice "Mom"
Boucher , already pictured with Reno on the Allo-Police cover, searched his
scrapbook and released a picture of himself chatting with late premier
Robert Bourassa.

The implications could hardly have been clearer. Boucher sees himself as a
mover and shaker in Quebec society and there is not much anyone seems to be
able to do about it. Indeed, over the past few weeks, major Quebec media
outlets had been lining up for interviews with the biker boss.

In Parliament, the Bloc Quebecois has long been campaigning to have
organizations such as Boucher's Angels declared illegal. Police say that's
the only way to get at the top bosses of bikers gangs. Until now, both the
Quebec and federal governments had been reluctant to go along.

In Canada, you can't make it a crime to belong to a group without
circumventing the Charter of Rights, as it involves removing the
constitutional right of association of those who belong to the targeted
organizations.

But now, Quebec's solicitor-general Serge Menard says he has reluctantly
come around to the argument that this is the only way to curb motorcycle gangs.

There is a precedent. During the 1970 October Crisis, it was made illegal
to belong to the FLQ, the Front de Liberation du Quebec.

On Thursday, Menard asked how it can be that criminal bikers who are
gaining ground daily in Canada are considered less of a threat to society
than a handful of Quebec political terrorists.

That explosive question will fall on Parliament's lap when the House of
Commons resumes next week.

Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears in The Star
on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.