Justice Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2009

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

What's the name of that project?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

The Committee of Mayors was the name of the original project under Gilbert Bonnemaison, a mayor of a suburb of Paris, and it was produced the 1980s. I can certainly give you information on that.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

The same kind of experiment was conducted in much tougher cities such as Medellin and Bogota, in Colombia. You said that, in Medellin—correct me if I noted down the wrong figures—the homicide rate was 381 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991 and 229 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2007. Is that correct? All right. That's still a lot.

What is the homicide rate in Canada?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

I knew you would ask me that question. We have around 360 homicides in Canada a year for a population of 30 million.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

It's between the two.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

The average in Canada per hundred thousand is a little over two.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

The rate over there is still very high relative to what we have in Canada. From what I've understood, the number was 80 in Bogota in 1993, but it has fallen to 20. That's correct?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

In fact, it's 19.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Can you give us an idea of the various methods that have been implemented in those cities to achieve those results?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

As I've said, it's a mixture of approaches targeting the most high-risk offenders, the people the police know about, the ones who they know are dealing, the ones they know are involved in leading the gangs, and using tough sentencing in those cases but also working with the community leaders to change attitudes within those communities about the use of violence.

Some of that can be through the use of public campaigns with posters telling people what the consequences are, saying: do you really want to end up your life in this way? Some of it is through the use of community forums with discussion about what people would prefer to do. A lot of it is in terms of implanting projects in the community using people who are often former gang members themselves, which is a very powerful way of helping to change the attitudes of young people.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Who approaches the community leaders? Is it the police?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

It's a combination of people.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

All right.

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

It's the city plus the police, plus the prosecuting service, plus the social services, plus housing environment. It's across the board in that way.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

You live in Montreal, if I understand correctly.

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

Yes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

So you can observe what's being done, or at least what they're trying to do, in the Saint-Michel neighbourhood. The police and communities are getting involved in the context of that approach.

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

Yes.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

We're sent thousands of pages to read every day, but I would nevertheless like to ask you to send the committee a summary of what has been done. Is that possible?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

Yes, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

That will be it.

Mr. Moore.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Just so we're clear, Ms. Shaw, could you send that information to the clerk of the committee? Then they'll circulate it to the whole committee, because I would like to see some of those studies as well.

I haven't seen the UN drug report, the one that was released in April, but I think I read some criticism of it as to whether it was overly optimistic in its assessment of the reduction in the drug trade internationally. Am I right about those criticisms? Are they accurate?

[Dr. Margaret Shaw]

I can't really comment on that because I haven't followed the response to it, partly because the drug commission is one commission we don't work with closely. We work with the crime commission. I'm sorry, I haven't really followed that.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

In terms of The Godfather books and listening to the original character that Brando played in the movie, in justifying the role of organized crime in meeting the illegal needs of society in that period of time, I get the sense that in terms of the work you're doing you're trying to eliminate as much as possible that need--drug dependency, prostitution, and I suppose we could go down the list. It seems to me that's the thrust of the various things you've spoken about, and that's what you're really trying to get at. Is that fair?