Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB) Copyright: 2001 Calgary Herald Contact: http://www.calgaryherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66 Author: Terence Corcoran BIG BROTHER HAS A BRAND NEW WEAPON Think Hard Before You Send Money To The U.S. To Help Your Relatives TORONTO - Claiming to be fighting a valiant war on crime, governments around the world - but especially in Canada - are actually fighting an escalating war on people. This includes Ottawa's draconian "money-laundering" regulations. If you send $15,000 in cash to pay for your grandmother's hip replacement at a U.S. hospital, your name will go on the list of potential money launderers. Privacy? Freedom? Guilt? Innocence? Forget it. Under some definition, sending cash into the U.S. health-care system probably is money laundering. Another manifestation of Ottawa's war on people at the expense of individual freedom is Bill C-24, a law to fight organized crime. Introduced last April, C-24 whipped through final third reading last week, just before the MP's fled Ottawa with their pockets stuffed with the proceeds of organized politics. The new law vastly expands government power and gives police the right to break the law to enforce the law. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has called parts of the legislation "evil," but that didn't faze the government. People who tried to follow C-24 on its rapid run through the Commons say it is as bad in the final version as it was the day it was introduced. Provincial and local governments have their own power-expansion ambitions and are more than ready to hand police fresh authority to stomp on basic rights. Ontario last month reintroduced its own infamous organized crime legislation, noted mostly for giving government the ability to seize the assets of innocent people if prosecutors think the assets were acquired, directly or indirectly, through some organized criminal activity. That these laws go overboard and trample on people's rights nobody seriously doubts. Oddly, though, it's not until the laws and regulations are on the books that people begin to realize how much power governments have taken and how many rights have been lost. The federal money-laundering law, which sets up a new federal money-laundering agency to monitor every transaction over $10,000, passed last year with plenty of warning. But now that the law in in place, law societies are calling for amendments. There is also growing recognition the law will do nothing to stop organized crime. It's a little late for these concerns. Banks, investment houses and others are also trying to fight regulations that would imposes massive paper-pushing and monitoring costs - estimated at up to $100 million - and turn bankers, lawyers and accountants into government spies on their customers. It's not a police state yet, but the laws are in place to create one should anyone get the urge. The common thread running through these money-laundering and other anti-crime laws around the world leads straight to Washington and the most futile crime crusade since Prohibition: the war on drugs. Hundreds of billions of dollars, global prosecution regimes and out-of-control police actions are doing little to stop the drug trade. But they are lining the pockets of bureaucrats and police workers and laying the groundwork for institutionalized state control. The international rhetorical campaign against money laundering, organized crime and so-called "gang" laws, has escalated into what one legal specialist called a "regulatory jihad." The objective is to enroll the whole world in the U.S. drug war. The enrollment technique is to grossly exaggerate the crime. Ottawa's money-laundering legislation was adopted on the grounds that somewhere between $5 billion and $17 billion in crime proceeds were being washed through Canada every year. Those numbers were concocted by a consultant who defined money laundering as an "economic crime." It's a handy catch-all that included insurance fraud ($2.5 billion), cellular phone fraud ($650 million), stock market fraud ($3 billion) and telemarketing fraud ($4 billion). Even if these numbers are accurate, and they look wildly implausible, most of the crimes have nothing to do with money laundering or the drug industry. The New Yorker magazine estimated last year that the U.S. government spends $16 billion US a year on the war on drugs, state and local governments another $24 billion US. The result is two million people in prison, up from 750,000 a year ago. But the number of dug addicts has not changed. Where do Canada's governments get such enthusiasm for joining this absurd U.S. war - and at such expense to Canadians' rights and protections? The new laws expand police powers, break down the trust between bankers and customers, and between lawyers and clients, and give governments new authority to prosecute and harass innocent people. The U.S. war on drugs is fast becoming a Canadian war on Canadians. And we don't even have a drug problem worth worrying about. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart