Thank you for your question.
I’m going to talk briefly about part of my work. I founded an organization called “Pour 3 Points.” It trains coaches who work with young people, particularly young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who, in Montreal, are largely racialized youth.
First of all, I think it is indeed relevant to go beyond the justice system to look more broadly at how our public policies translate into programs and invest in our communities to prevent, as you mentioned, young people from coming into contact with the justice system. So it seems obvious to me that we need to invest in community health and education, whether at the provincial or federal level.
However, beyond that, we must ask ourselves how to reallocate funds that are invested in police forces to serve other services. We hear a lot of talk about cutting police funding. This is not an aberration. Indeed, every year, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels, our budgets in education, transportation and all other areas are called into question. Yet they never question the funding allocated to the police. In Montreal alone, if I am not mistaken, the SPVM’s budget has increased significantly and represents $665 million annually, or 11% of the City of Montreal’s budget.
That said, aboriginal women in Montreal are questioned 11 times more often than white women. Ms. Michel can correct me if I’m wrong. So we have to ask ourselves why we are giving public funds to allow the police to intervene. That is where we have to ask ourselves whether we can reallocate these funds to community workers so they can intervene when there is a problem.
Right now, there is a debate about body cameras. In fact, the cameras have shown that they have no effect on the level of violence in interventions. We’re still going to invest money in—