I think you will know from the research that it's complex. You have to look at the root causes first of all, what leads people to criminal behaviour. We heard from Mr. Priestley-Wright, for example, that the people who stole his vehicle appear to have been involved with drugs. They appear to have been afraid. I don't know what their circumstances were, if they were caught or not. But if you look at some of the violence involving youth in rural communities, it's not that different from urban communities. A lot of research explains the causes of domestic violence.
I've done some work looking at rural versus urban economic growth, and from my perspective a lot of our resources go into urban centres. It's also easier sometimes to provide services in densely populated areas so there are some structural challenges in providing the same level of service, whether we're talking about education, health or policing in communities where people are more spread out. That being said, investing in primary prevention is definitely without question the best place to invest.
You mentioned policing by the RCMP. I think police officers in rural communities whether it's the Sûreté du Québec, the Ontario Provincial Police or the RCMP, work under much more challenging circumstances in some respects than those policing in large urban centres that typically have fewer individual police officers patrolling. Often in smaller communities the police are spread much more thinly. The fact that so many police officers killed in this country are killed serving Canada in smaller communities I think is a strong testament to the fact that they themselves are also victimized in violent incidents.
The third thing I think is important, and again Mr. Priestley-Wright mentioned this, is the kinds of supports available in rural communities to victims of violence. I believe he said he wasn't sure life was worth living, that he sometimes regretted having survived the violent confrontation. That's a tragic but truthful example of what often happens to victims of violence who don't receive support or justice.