Public Safety committee  I think everyone is aware that the RCMP has policing jurisdiction across a good part of Canada, actually, including all provinces except Ontario and Quebec, all territories, 155 municipalities and approximately 600 indigenous communities, as well as the contracted policing of jur

Public Safety committee  I don't have a lot of specific insights on that. I think what I can say is that, right across the country, we work in terms of prevention and, depending on the circumstances of the investigation, individuals who are charged, and the nature of the circumstances under which they ar

Public Safety committee  Thank you for your question. I would say that traditionally with regard to gangs and organized crime being involved in drug trafficking, that has always led to accompanying firearms. With regard to the transition to, I'll use fentanyl and methamphetamine, for example, there are

Public Safety committee  I would like to add something, if we have the time. Earlier, we touched briefly on the work of our forensic labs and their ability to match cartridge casings in criminal activity. They equally have the ability to match a firearm from one crime scene with a firearm from another c

Public Safety committee  I guess my perspective, in terms of laying charges, is that we have a full slate of offences related to firearms in terms of street gangs and organized crime. We have organized crime offences that can apply equally to both gangs and organized crime groups. We have a fairly compr

Public Safety committee  Yes. In terms of prevention, as I mentioned earlier, in my last intervention, we need a lot of education, a lot of awareness, a lot of working with community groups and back to the CFSEU program that they are leading. They're working with a lot of community groups both to try to

Public Safety committee  It's extremely important.

Public Safety committee  What I would say on that, in terms of a comprehensive criminal justice system, whether it's dealing with firearms, organized crime or gangs, law enforcement.... Enforcing laws is a very big part of that, but equally big is the full continuum of Canada's justice system. We, as law

Public Safety committee  Yes, they do. I'll pass it to Kellie to expand on that.

Public Safety committee  My first comment would be I think there have always been vulnerable people being drawn into the gang lifestyle. I don't have specific stats with regard to ages or gender, and I'm sure it varies across the country. What I would say, and it's been alluded to here today, is there i

Public Safety committee  That's a very good question. There are two things I would say there. First, we haven't finalized our statistics on the number of seizures for 2021, or done that analysis. Two, the 2020 numbers that I talked about were a very small subset of the total number of firearms that were

Public Safety committee  No, it is a useful number. It does provide some insights, but I think we would need to do more tracing on a larger scale to really get some very good insight of patterns and trends.

Public Safety committee  We've seen an increase in recent years. As I said, the number traced last year I think was around 2,000 in 2020. Our initial look at the 2021 numbers was there were well over 3,000 requests for tracing, so we are receiving—

Public Safety committee  We don't yet have the tracing results for 2021 broken down yet in terms of—

Public Safety committee  I think it is pretty consistent, but I'll refer to Ms. Paquette, if she has any additional insights.