Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm from Moncton, not far from where you people are. There's a bit of a nexus between the Moncton region and Halifax in terms of organized crime activities.
I have a couple of questions. They follow on what Mr. Ménard was asking. It goes to motivation, I suppose, what you might tell us from your experiences observing and experiencing the gangs or observing the crime issues in greater Halifax.
There are two questions.
What we have learned in places like Winnipeg and out on the west coast is that there is a very intelligent use of young offenders--or people under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, young offenders, young people--to be pawns or to be players in crime so that if they were to be caught, it would be in a much less punitive or penalty-ridden regime. That's the way, the modus operandi of gangs in places like Winnipeg and out west in Vancouver.
I want to ask you, first, if you see that happening and what your thoughts on it are. There's a movement probably up here in Ottawa. The government seems to be moving toward a climate that would suggest that if a young offender, a youth criminal justice person, knows the meaning of his actions, he may in the future be tried or dealt with in a more adult court fashion. That's my first question.
The second question deals with guns and whether you think there's an increase in the use of handguns and an increased sophistication of those to move the criminal agenda forward in Halifax--whether it's growing quickly, not quickly; whether there's something that law enforcement or border security could do more to prevent that, if that were the case--and just generally, what you're experiencing in your community with respect to gun violence. It's something we've been looking at across the country.