How B.C. became a world crime superpower

By almost any measure it was a thriving enterprise, with subsidiaries in eight countries and a flourishing distribution business. Even more impressive, it was run out of Vancouver, a city that's seen many head offices disappear over the years. And with its strong sales, the venture would easily have been considered one of British Columbia's largest private companies. That is, if the operation at the heart of it all wasn't a criminal syndicate trading in marijuana, cocaine, heroin, guns and real estate.

Consider, for a moment, just a few figures that show the size and scope of the crime industry in B.C.:

·
There are an estimated 20,000 marijuana grow ops in houses across the
province, and many thousands more hidden in the mountains and valleys
of the interior. It's conservatively estimated that marijuana is an
industry with revenues of $5 billion to $7 billion a year.

· In
the last few years, according to the Canadian Border Services Agency,
more than $1 billion worth of cocaine has been seized at borders in the
Pacific region. One media report last fall found the amount of cocaine
recovered at B.C.'s borders more than tripled in the previous two
years.

· The province is the main port of entry for chemicals
used in the manufacture of drugs such as methamphetamine and ecstasy,
while B.C.-based Asian gangs are the largest suppliers of ecstasy to
Canada and the U.S.

· In the last year there have been roughly
two dozen gangland slayings in the Vancouver region. The number of
homicides in B.C.'s Lower Mainland in the first four months of this
year was nearly three times that of Toronto. And when Maclean's
recently looked at Canada's most dangerous cities using data from
Statistics Canada, 11 of the top 20 were located in B.C. Meanwhile the
number of gangs operating in the province has jumped from less than 10
a decade ago to 129.