A mondo grow-op bust in Oshawa, Ontario gave Queen's Park an opportunity to exercise a powerful new "legal weapon" called the Civil Remedies Act, Toronto Star reported on January 19th.

The plan to confiscate the private property of "criminals" in order to compensate the "victims" of crime was introduced by Ontario's Attorney General Michael Bryant. The Act "allows the attorney general to have civil courts freeze, seize and forfeit the proceeds and instruments of unlawful activity to the Crown."

Freezing, seizing, and forfeiting... oh my.

In September 2006, Bryant got a chance to exercise these new powers in Hamilton, when a seized crack house was given over to the community. According to a press release from Bryant's office, "Since October 2003, $2.5 million in property and assets, including weapons, street racing cars, marijuana grow operation equipment and cash, has been seized and forfeited under the Civil Remedies Act. In addition, the province currently has $8.4 million in net assets preserved under this act."

The mental thing is, no conviction is necessary:"Civil asset forfeiture focuses solely on the connection between property and unlawful activity." Does this smack of an anti-poverty law to anyone else? No convinctions are necessary? What if I suspect SNC Lavalin of unlawful activity that's harming the citizens of Haiti? Can we takeover their offices? That's what I thought.

I'm fascinated by this Act, which I had never heard of until now. On the one hand, the power of the state to dispossess suspected criminals of their property is appalling, on the other hand, I would like to see this state power exercized against some real corporate criminals to good social ends.

There's also a lot of material to mine around complicity here: organized crime and state violence. When we talk about alternative forms of social organization and property distribution we are also asking implicit questions about orders of governance outside of the law. This places us squarely in the terrain of another gang of capitalists. Our enemy's enemy is not necessarily our friend.