Thank you.
First of all, Mr. Champagne, Mr. Stewart, Ms. Wood and Mr. Borovoy, thank you for coming here today.
First of all, I will make a brief preamble because there is something I want to understand clearly. Mr. Stewart, you tabled a French document that I have here with me. It contains graphs. One of those graphs supports your position, which is that people who are unemployed commit more crimes, or rather, more robberies.
I come from Quebec, where the unemployment rate is approximately 10% on average. That amounts to some 388,000 unemployed. We also have some 500,000 people on social assistance, because those people no longer receive employment insurance benefits. We have a manpower shortage of 17% to 18%, more or less. In Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick, it's even higher than in Quebec, and you seem to be saying that in my province, Quebec, people are more likely to commit crimes, at least according to your study. Your study establishes a link between unemployment and violent crime.
I have been practising in Quebec for 35 years, and I do look at statistics because we have to plead sentences. God only knows how often we have to do that. So first of all, I can assure you that your link does not hold. It does not hold for Newfoundland and Labrador, because it is not true there are more criminals because there are more unemployed. That is not true.
However, I do have a question for you. In Alberta, people are rich, as they are in Ontario. They are richer than the people of Quebec, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the people of New Brunswick. However, Alberta and Ontario have the highest numbers of criminals.
How do you explain that there is a higher number of robberies in a rich province, when you are trying to tell us that poor people in the poorer provinces are those who commit the most crimes? Your reasoning does not hold water. I would like to know why there are more criminals committing robberies with firearms in the rich provinces, and fewer in the poorer provinces.
I would like to hear your answer, Mr. Stewart.