I apologize for not being here for the beginning of your presentation, but I did appreciate what I heard. I have to say that the approach being taken from a public health perspective is one I've seen to a much more limited extent in my own riding than in some of the areas you're talking about, for instance, in Colombia.
There's a section of my riding that historically has been very poor. It's one of the districts the Government of Quebec's education department has designated as a “high poverty area”, and it's had significant violent activity. A number of years ago—actually, shortly after I was first elected—I sat down with the local public health officials, the organizations that work with youth, the owners of rental properties, and the municipal agencies. We actually created a round table. From that round table, we actually came up with some strategies involving health officials, the local police, the municipal housing agencies, and the schools in the area and were able to access money from the national crime prevention strategy—which still exists, I believe. As a result of that, significant measures were undertaken that actually helped reduce the amount of crime, some of the dropout rates, the amount of domestic violence, etc., and violent crimes that were happening. And the minor crimes, the precursors to worse crime, like graffiti, mischief, the breaking of windows, etc., were significantly reduced for a significant period of time—almost ten years.
Unfortunately, now the moneys for crime prevention have been reduced and are not available, and we've now seen the appearance of youth gangs in that area.
So I appreciate your message, and I will definitely be bringing it back to my party and to the House of Commons, and hopefully it will be part of a report being made here.
That's all I have to say. I don't have any questions, given that I was not able to hear all of your presentation.
Thank you.