Pour un « x » de trop : une enquête de la GRC

Our story begins in the mid-1970s. It will end in1984. It takes place, primarily, in three countries—Canada, the United States and Lebanon. The events are tangled up in a tangled web of drug trafficking, organized crime, contemporary history and political assassination.

The central figure of the story is corporal Mark Bourque, who led an RCMP investigation that would eventually employ a staff of 90, log more than 100 days of stakeouts and run up a bill totalling 3 million dollars of the time. The resources deployed led to the seizure of seven tonnes of cannabis resin, whereupon an 8,000-page case file was drafted, implicating drug traffickers in the United States and Canada.

This airtight case gave Texas police the evidence they needed to indict the perpetrators, including Houston Mafia godfather Sam Cammarata. And yet, in Canada, one misplaced X compromised the validity of this titanic effort and opened veritable debate opposing law and justice.