Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Minister, Assistant Commissioner Shean and Mr. Bhupsingh, thank you for joining us today. We greatly appreciate it.
First of all, Mr. Minister, I would like to thank you for the clarifications you have made on the fact that some street gang members can benefit from the witness protection program. As my colleague Mr. Garrison said, a number of stakeholders saw the situation differently. Thank you very much for making those comments today.
If I may, I will continue to talk about street gangs. I have some fears about that. So I wish to raise various issues and share my concerns with you.
We agree with those who are combatting street gangs and who say that giving members who are trying to leave street gangs access to the program is a major tool that they sorely need. Let’s face it. But it is already difficult to meet budgets. Just think of the fact that some groups who are combatting street gangs in municipalities, for instance the Éclipse squad in Montreal, will lose their funding at the end of March.
So how do you plan to implement a bill like that? On the one hand, this bill is very important for witness protection. On the other hand, there are some significant examples of funding being eliminated for the fight against street gangs in Quebec, since the funding is not recurrent, unfortunately. I see a double standard.
I am really wondering how we are going to manage to implement this bill if we eliminate policing tools particularly in Quebec where the mandate is to combat street gangs. What do you think about that?
