Mr. Speaker, an important issue for many Canadians is assisting young people to not get involved in gangs. I know it is a huge issue in certain areas of our country, Winnipeg being one of them. What we are looking for is a government that uses a proactive approach by providing other opportunities to those individuals who are at high risk of getting involved in gang activities. We would like to see the government include in a budget document some strong, clear direction as to how it plans to deal with the issue of gangs.
Over the last number of years in Winnipeg, gang memberships have skyrocketed to well into the thousands from the low hundreds in the late nineties. This is an issue that continues to be of great concern. I wonder if the member would provide some comment with respect to the role of government allocating resources in order to fight crime by looking at some of the causes of crime.