—recently published a book in Quebec.
Yes, I'm aware of that, sir. Don't take it as flattery. The phenomenon, which is attracting a lot of attention, is relatively recent.
I'm just going to repeat something I probably went over too quickly in my presentation. Young people who join street gangs are arming themselves, and arming themselves heavily. It's a spiral. They arm themselves because their opponents are armed, and the third guy arms himself because the first two are armed, and so on.
In this case, increasing the sentences or imposing minimum sentences has little deterrent effect because to some extent, they are more afraid of the young men in the other gang, their rivals, than the law. That's why, if you want to solve the problem of street gangs, you have to deal with the root causes of the problem rather than piling on relatively useless penalties.
The reason a young person decides not to enter into a drug transaction unarmed is to avoid the risk of getting stabbed or shot by the other person. I'm not saying I agree with that; it's unfortunate that that's the way it is. However, that shows once again that the deterrent effect is really minimal.