With regard to our street gang problem, I'm gratified you mentioned that this is not a problem limited only to Toronto. As I'm sure you're aware, Montreal has experienced significant problems with street gangs and street gang violence, as have other cities in Canada, including Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Halifax. I have spoken and met with the chiefs of all of these jurisdictions. All of them are very concerned, as are their communities, about safety in their communities and particularly the use of firearms.
The proportion of murders committed with a gun has doubled in the past ten years in the city of Toronto. This is a very disturbing trend, particularly in light of what we have also seen taking place with street gangs, a very similar cultural issue, in our counterpart cities in the United States. One of the responses we have mounted effectively in Toronto is the use of section 467.1 of the Criminal Code in identifying and dealing with some of these street gangs. Some of them are in fact criminal enterprises, organized crime groups. We have mounted very significant, complex, and, I will confess, expensive and resource-intensive investigations in apprehending, dismantling, and disrupting those gangs. That section has been very effective.
One of the challenges we face is that when we conduct these investigations--perhaps you have read of this recently--it places tremendous pressure on the other aspects of the criminal justice system. It places tremendous pressure on the capacity of our courts and on the capacity of our own force to provide security for those courts. For example, we've been going through a preliminary hearing for one of our street gangs, a very violent street gang involved in several murders and many violent acts. Our costs for providing court security, the need for specialized facilities for those prosecutions, and the challenge for legal aid and other aspects of the system have been enormous.
But we are attempting to use the tools available to us to provide an effective response so that we get the most violent offenders off the streets.