Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses.
Excuse me. I have a bit of a cold.
I want to address a crime issue that is concerning to me. The latest crime stats for the last six months of 2024 compared with the whole year of 2023 show it is up by 50%. That scares me. Recently, in my own community, a young child witnessed his father getting shot by a repeat offender and now feels that he let down his father because he couldn't protect him.
When we look at hate crimes and their percentages, 48% of hate crimes are based on race; 29% target religion, and 13% involve sexual orientation. In terms of cybercrimes, 41,162 were reported from January to June 2024 just this year alone in Canada. That's alarming to me.
People are running scared. They're afraid. I have constituents who tell me they're afraid to even open the door because they don't know what they're going to see. I had a constituent this weekend who had just installed a camera, one of those.... I don't know what they're called.