Canada a 'welcome wagon' for crime

Expert speaks at Toronto conference

By Adrian Humphreys
and Chris Eby / National Post

TORONTO – Canada has become one of the world’s most important hubs for global crime syndicates, an acclaimed authority on organized crime warned a summit of senior police and government officials yesterday.

“Law enforcement officials everywhere agree that Canada is…the hub of international drug trafficking, organized fraud and corresponding money-laundering operations by many crime syndicates,” said Antonio Nicaso, a lecturer in organized crime and author of nine books on criminal gangs.

“Canada has always been a welcome wagon for organized crime; a revolving door that lets everyone in regardless of their criminal past,” he said. “As other countries begin cracking down on organized crime figures, Canada is quickly becoming an easy point for Asian heroin and Colombian cocaine headed for North American market.”

As anecdotal evidence, Mr. Nicaso read the transcript of a conversation, recorded by police, between Alfonso Caruana, a powerful Mafia boss serving a 18-years prison term in Canada, and a drug trafficker: “Canada, for wanted people, is the safer place to live,” Caruana said. “Here there is much lower risk of detention and prosecution than in the United States or Europe.”

The annual take from organized crime in Canada is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Nicaso said, and the country is widely considered a source country for marijuana, speed and designer drugs, largely controlled by organized crime. He said there are 18 criminal organizations with international links working in Canada.

Mr. Nicaso was invited to speak at the summit, organized by the government of Ontario and attended by attorney-general of Ontario, P.E.I. and New Brunswick, as well as senior police officials from several countries, to help law enforcement agencies better combat organized crime.

Mr. Nicaso is a consultant on organized crime for the FBI, the RCMP and Italian police. He sits on the advisory board of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption at York University in Toronto, and on the governing council of the Alliance Against Contraband in Geneva, Switzerland.

He attacked the federal government’s anti-gang legislation, Bill C-95, as ineffectual. The bill defines organized crime as a group of five or more criminals acting together.

“If four Hells Angels work together in a drug trafficking ring, does the absence of the fifth member mean it is not a criminal organization?” he asked.

The bill’s landmark test case, against members of a native street gang in Winnipeg, spent more than a year in court.

“Rather than dealing with organized criminal activity it merely shows the government ineffectiveness and ignorance. The act, passed in 1997, has yet to score a single big hit and, in my personal opinion, is doomed to failure.”

After Mr. Nicaso’s comment left the audience in awkward silence, Giuliano Zaccardelli, Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP, defended the federal record.

“I just want to remind everyone that Canada is a very safe place to live and, with all due respect to our guest, is the best country in the world to live. The threat is very real but we have dove very well up to now,” he said.

However, Deputy Commissioner Zaccardelli agreed that significant changes are needed to meet the challenges of organized crime.

“Unless we are able to create a seamless body of police forces across the world, working with one another, we are not going to succeed, because the enemy has already done this,” he said. “We’ve been given a lot of tools. But [Bill] C-95 is not the answer to everything.”

James Flaherty, Attorney-General of Ontario, said he is drafting legislation for presentation this fall that will allow the use of civil law to pursue assets before a criminal conviction is registered.

“We intend to be the first jurisdiction in Canada to use civil law to take the profit out of unlawful enterprises,” said Mr. Flaherty.

“We want to say to organized crime that if you have gained property in Ontario through the proceeds of crime, you don’t own it, have no ownership rights to it. It belongs to the people of Ontario.”

He said the current Criminal Code provisions for seizing the proceeds of crime after a successful prosecution “hasn’t done very well in terms of discouraging organized crime in Canada.”

Asset forfeiture occurs so many years after charges are laid that it is “a meaningless deterrent,” Mr. Flaherty said. He also promised to fund special forces of police officers, forensic accountants and special prosecutors to attack the growing organized crime problem in Ontario.

Mr. Nicaso had several suggestions for the policy-makers, including:

Creating a national, integrated policing strategy that sees all related agencies working as one to attack gangsters;

Enacting a broad law, similar to the U.S. Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Statute, that helps government agencies dismantle an entire criminal enterprise;

Directing the courts to pay special attention to mobsters, including additional sentences for criminal association and eliminating parole for drug traffickers;

Entrenching a better definition of organized crime in federal law;

Vigorously seizing criminal assets and giving the money to police to fund the fight against organized crime.

Aug. 3, 2000