Yes, thank you very much.
I'll do the first piece, if you don't mind, on how we see it as a crime prevention tool, and then I'm going to refer to Staff Sergeant Gauthier, if that's okay.
When I first came here, I did refer to a drug treatment centre as the greatest crime prevention tool we could build. We have over 400 young people between 13 and 17 on a waiting list for treatment today in the city of Ottawa, and only one provincially run drug treatment centre for 13- to 17-year-olds. So we tried to bring everybody from both sides of the street, to be fair, with the Liberals in the middle, to one location so that we could have this discussion about why a drug treatment centre, from a policing perspective on crime prevention, from a health perspective on dealing with young people with addictions, was going to work for all of us.
I think we were successful in the fact that the province announced two drug treatment centres, one for francophones in the east end and one for anglophones in the west end of the city. Both will be up and running by year-end, I hope.
From our perspective, we were seeing increased street-level crimes in only one location in the city, exactly the same location where we've seen increased crack cocaine use since 2005, in particular in that section of the city, six blocks from here. From our perspective, as well, we felt that if we attacked the drug trafficking in those areas, specifically street-level trafficking, to be fair, we could also start making it a safer environment for those who live there, and give some of the people who need treatment an opportunity.
People will ask why we focused on 13- to 17-year-olds. Because 70% of 13- to 17-year-olds will not use drugs for five years after residential treatment, we felt it was an opportunity to turn the tap off rather than focusing specifically on the street now, where we have hundreds if not thousands of drug-addicted people living on the streets, either permanently or temporarily, in the city. We were targeting, and we are trying to make a difference from that perspective.
I'm going to let Staff Sergeant Gauthier talk about the drug issue in the city, if that's okay.