From my perspective, when I think of organized crime I'm thinking more along the lines of some of the biker groups that are out there.
You were just talking about heads, subordinates, and as Mr. Trudell said, their single motivation is making money from crime. What we have in our communities is nothing so organized. Again, there is the exception where there are older groups of young adults who have become organized to some level and are working collaboratively to bring in money through crime. Certainly that is a policing issue. But I would say the vast majority, 95% to 98% of what we see in our community, are just young people who are out of school and who come together sometimes just to eat or be able to sleep. While individuals within these groups of young people end up committing crime, they are not reporting to anyone. They are not taking the money they make and bringing it to anyone inside the community. They are not sharing resources in that respect. So nothing I see in the community leads me to believe that we have a gang issue or organized crime issues within our community.
For a lot of these young people, when they do end up in trouble with the criminal justice system, there's no one there to post bail for them; they can't afford the $500 it costs to get a lawyer to defend them at their bail hearing. It's contingent on people like me to show up at the jail if they're in detention to maybe put $50 in their canteen for them to have something to eat. These young folks have no supports around them that would lead one to believe.... I've come across situations where one of the members of the biker gangs gets arrested, and they have other members there to get a lawyer to go and bail them out. With the young people I deal with in our communities, for the most part—as Mr. Trudell said—it's their mother who is organizing all of this, if she's even able to show up for them.
So, again, I don't believe organized crime to be a major issue within most of the neighbourhoods here in Toronto.