Good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you for inviting me.
As a result of my role as coordinator of youth projects at Maison d'Haiti, I'm mainly going to address the historical aspect. We deal directly with young people, at the street level. Here we're talking about the situation within families, which we find in the streets and subsequently in the various systems.
In Quebec, the history of gangs began when youths wanted to defend themselves. They told teachers they were being bullied and attacked outside the school, but the teachers couldn't believe them. Those youths therefore decided to call on cousins and big brothers to protect them. Teachers at school told them they could do nothing for them, since the incidents were taking place outside the school. It was really starting in the 1980s that a number of groups emerged. Those groups were initially formed to protect young blacks and young rockers.
The rockers subsequently realized that young blacks very often hung out in large numbers. They concluded from that that those groups were forming very quickly and they decided to withdraw. Understanding that the group gave them a certain strength, young blacks decided to continue. The first group broke off, some of its members settled in Montreal North and others stayed in the neighbourhood around Bélanger Street. There were the Bo-Gars, in Montreal North, and the Family, in the neighbourhood near Bélanger Street. The latter subsequently took control, became the CDP group and moved to the Saint-Michel neighbourhood.
We saw this group grow during the 1990s. On the one hand, there were the guys from the Bélanger Street neighbourhood, and on the other hand, the guys from Montreal North. I believe that's really the street gang stronghold in Montreal.
Our work was to understand exactly what these young people were experiencing and what was going on in the families. We very quickly realized that, in the families in general, the parents had to leave home very early in the morning to get to work, sometimes around 5:00 a.m., and returned home very late in the evening. During that time, the youths needed a place to meet, people to identify with. From that point, the gangs really took control of these youths. The phenomenon continued to evolve in the 1990s. The American dream became an important thing. There were the Bloods and the Crips, which are an exact model of the American experience.
What about the parents of these young people? At the time, we were talking about the youths of the Haitian community because that's really where things began. The youths became disconnected from reality. Their parents didn't exactly understand what they were going through. In addition, the youths were having a very hard time adapting. The parents gave up and said to themselves that, if their children were arrested by the police, the system would take charge of them. In general, we observed that the parents disowned their children.
As for the present situation of these youths, they're living in a threefold culture. They're required to be Haitian at home, Quebeckers in the street and Americans in their dreams. Their vision of the world doesn't enable them to understand exactly what's going on. In addition, they're dealing with a lack of jobs, activities and recreations. In a number of places, no recreational activities are available to them. As a result of all that, they have grouped together in gangs.
Today, in 2006, we see there are three levels in street gangs. There are these youths who hang around the schools; these are the juniors. There are also gangs that really identify with the Bloods and the Crips, the Blues and the Reds. Lastly, there are those who do business. In fact, these are people who commit criminal offences of all kinds. We've moreover heard a lot about them recently.
As for us, in the Saint-Michel and Montreal North neighbourhoods, we now have to focus on the problem of youths who are members of the Bloods and Crips. These two groups are really confronting each other in the streets, around the schools and in the parks.
The Bloods and Crips are two groups that detest each other. This is somewhat a copy of what's going on in the United States. For example, when a youth leaves Montreal North with a red bandanna and goes to Saint-Michel, he'll definitely be beaten up by the Blues. Most of the juniors in the streets monitor the road. They're there to monitor what goes on and to see who enters their territory. Then there are the veterans, who we know well. The veterans are still working in drug reselling, prostitution and all kinds of businesses. Sometimes they're affiliated with other groups now called the businessmen.
What must be understood about these different groups, and why the Bloods and Crips are the most important groups for us in the street, is that they have a major influence. Today, we have to start doing prevention with youths who are perhaps five or six years old, because these groups are doing a very good job. With the American dream, the rise of hip hop music, gangsta rap, if you say street gangs, in 2007, you're talking about youths who are five or six years old who have this in their minds. All they see is what's conveyed in the media, what they see on television. They want to be like the rapper 50 Cent, for example. These days, that's their idol, and they want to be exactly like him.
We're talking about prevention with five- and six-year-old children because they often find themselves in the following situation. A youth sees his big brother or his mother, who's 16 or 17 years of age, who has a friend at home who is maybe 17 or 18 years old; he belongs to a gang, has is bandanna and puts it on the table. That same youth will see that the older youth—say, his mother's boyfriend—is watching 50 Cent on TV and it's extremely violent. That's how he's being formed, and we really have to focus our efforts on these youths because it's they who will soon be in the secondary schools and will become the king pins of the Bloods and Crips street gangs.
Why is there so much talk about the Crips and the Bloods? It's obviously understood that these youths, through what's conveyed in the United States, through music, think they've found a way to settle matters. Since they've already been excluded, they figure they no longer have anything to lose. Since they have nothing to lose, even when they wind up in prison and other systems, their threefold culture enables them to get through the system, return to the community and continue doing what they have to do, unfortunately. That's why it's important for us to see how we can reduce the number of youths who head in that direction.
Now let's talk about weapons. Last week, I was talking to a 15-year-old youth, and I asked him how he managed to find weapons at his age. He told me that it was easy, that he just had to go downtown, that he could find a weapon for $50. It can take maybe 10 minutes for a guy to bring one back.
We recently intervened near a school. One youth had been injured by another in a fist fight. He was 13 years old. In talking to another patroller who spoke Spanish as he did, he said that, in any case, he was going to settle the matter himself, that he was going to get his brother's weapon. That means that, today, from what youths see and experience, it's easy and entirely normal for them to have a weapon in their hands. We have to explain to them, because they don't yet know that it's prohibited to have a weapon. In their minds, everyone has one, so it's cool, and they're also going to try to get one. That's why I can say that we have an enormous job to do in terms of prevention, to make these youths understand the consequences of the various acts.
An act was recently passed. Now when we talk about a street gang, we know it's a criminal organization. Once again, the youths who have gotten involved in the Bloods and Crips groups aren't aware of this fact. The only thing they're going to understand is that, when they're arrested because they've acted in a certain way, they're going to fall under that act. We absolutely have to enable them to learn exactly what the law is and what it means. The same is true for weapons.
Yes, it's true that we can have acts that will enable us to protect the public, but it's also true that most of these youths, if they aren't aware because they're living inside their heads and in their dreams, can't understand that it isn't right to own a weapon, since they regularly see it on television and their idols carry them and have fun with them. If you go to 50 Cent's Web site, you'll see that a weapon opens the site. So a youth who wants to get onto the site knows he has to go “bang, bang” to get in, and that's a situation we experience every day with our youths.
Getting back to prevention, yes, I think we have to work very hard to do it. For a very long time, we've been trying to work with youths in the Saint-Michel and Montreal North neighbourhoods doing prevention. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to fight this phenomenon, this plague. This phenomenon has been promoted on TV with billions of dollars, with hip hop music and artists like 50 Cent and others, but it's unfortunately very difficult for the various community groups, which are in the field, which every day experience what the youths are experiencing and exactly report their day-to-day experience to us.
Unfortunately, we can't find the funding to be able to keep caseworkers who can continue working with these youths. Today, we've definitely realized that we have to start earlier. Unfortunately, we have to start in kindergarten, with children five or six years old, because they already have a red bandanna or a blue bandanna in their pocket and they already know... I don't mean these youths belong to gangs, but they already know their allegiance. That means that, if they belong to the Bloods, they know they have to hate and detest the Crips, and if they belong to the Crips, they know they have to hate and detest the Bloods, and when these youths meet in the street, they're going to shoot each other or they're, in a way, going to continue the same fight.
Will we manage to stop all this? I tell you right now no, unfortunately, but we'll have to be able to work upstream with a new generation with whom we can make contact and make a difference. I say quite often that we have to be able to give these youths something to lose because, for the moment, they have absolutely nothing to lose. When they wind up in the prison system, they still have nothing to lose, and it snowballs, because all they know is that, in the street, they'll find a way to make hay, as it were.