The causes of crime and violence are very complex. There is no one causal factor, but what you've seen in recent years, not just in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, or Ontario, is the confluence of a number of factors.
First of all, you have increased competition between small groups. So when Quebec targeted the Hells Angels, they really disrupted a major wholesaler of drugs. It opened an avenue for a number of groups to come in and take their place as wholesalers. So you had increased cooperation. I don't want to say this, but the one good thing that could be said about the Hells Angels was that, notwithstanding the bloody war they had in Quebec, when they emerged from that, they tended to control smaller groups and stop them from fighting.
The second reason is that you've seen a growing underclass of young men who live in poverty, who live in terrible conditions. In Halifax, we're talking about places like East Preston, Mulgrave Park, parts of Spryfield. I work in these communities with at-risk kids, and the conditions there are absolutely terrible.
For years, Canada looked to the United States and said, “Oh, we don't have the type of inner-city ghettos and concentration of poverty that the United States has.” Well, guess what? We do have that now, and to ignore that would be naive.
I would argue that one of the most significant factors that's driving the increase in violence—and in fact we are seeing an increase in violence, an increase in gangs—is this growing subclass or underclass of young men, racialized young men. In Nova Scotia it's primarily African Nova Scotians, and that is again because African Nova Scotians disproportionately live in poverty, in terrible communities. You go to public government subsidized housing—and I'll take you down to Mulgrave Park just a couple of blocks from here. You'll find it's 80% African Nova Scotian. That's the product of the long institutionalized racism that's been present in this province.