B.C. PLAYS DOWN CALL FOR NATIONAL STRATEGY ON CRIME

Illegal immigrants arriving by stealth in ship containers. Honduran bandits
selling drugs on the SkyTrain route. A crossfire between Vietnamese gangs.
Marijuana growing operations inside mansions in some of the finest
neighbourhoods.

Vancouver has them all, making it the sort of place where one might expect a
police chief's call to arms against organized crime would be welcomed.

But Lower Mainland city councillors and police spokesmen didn't seem to
think much of Toronto incoming police chief Julian Fantino's call for a
national crime-fighting strategy to counter the country's growing reputation
as a haven for criminals.

Burnaby Councillor Derek Corrigan said Fantino's remarks sounded more like
an attempt to shore up funding for a police department than a reflection of
reality.

Corrigan noted that crime rates have gone down in Vancouver and across the
country, but "if you can scare the citizens enough, they're bound to demand
that their politicians put more money into his department."

He rejected Fantino's suggestion that crime is rampant in Canada.

"We're one of the safest places to live and we all know that."

In a speech to a provincial Conservative party policy conference in
Hamilton, Fantino said Canada has become the "laughingstock of nations" for
failing to crack down on organized crime and to protect citizens from sexual
predators. His comments drew applause from a sympathetic audience, including
Ontario Premier Mike Harris, whose Tory government is fond of portraying
itself as being tough on crime.

"I believe, with all due respect, that some of our judges and policy makers
should get a reality check on life itself," said Fantino.

Criminal organizations, many linked to the drug trade, are often to blame
for community-based crimes, yet Canada's porous borders make it a hotbed for
organized criminal empires and foster its international image as a haven for
crooks and drug dealers, many from the U.S., he said.

"South of the border, Canada is seen as a sort of strainer, leaking from a
thousand holes," said Fantino.

"In more colloquial terms, I call it Swiss cheese, a place where crime
really does pay."

West Vancouver Councillor Allan Williams, who is also a former
attorney-general, said attempts to coordinate crime-fighting nationally tend
to be fragmented and to fall apart.

Instead, he says each province has to zero in on its own problems.

He also wondered how a country "awash in firearms" like the U.S. could
credibly attack Canada's efforts to control criminal elements. "It's like
the kettle calling the pot black."

Corporal Grant Learned, RCMP spokesman in B.C., said Canada already has a
national agency dealing with organized crime -- the RCMP.

He pointed to beefed-up policing at major Canadian airports and to new
initiatives to seize ill-gotten gains from criminal activity as two examples
of how that police force is tackling organized crime.

But he said Fantino is right about thing: the community is growing more
concerned about crime. And with some reason, he added.

"We have gangland-style shootings erupting on the streets of our city that
would be similar to the type of gangland activity that we saw back in the
'30s and '40s," Learned said. "It's absolutely unheard of, the level of
violence that is unfolding."

He said the solution lies in restoring some of the crime-fighting tools to
police agencies that have been removed by the courts, namely the right to
enter a person's home with an arrest warrant, and increased funding for the
fight against crime.

On the organized crime side, "the money that's involved is tremendous in
terms of their ability to deflect and defer attention," he said.

"We have to start getting serious about resource allocation."