Justice committee  There were 658 homicides in total in 2005. There were 222 firearm homicides in 2005. Those are the numbers for 2005. As John said, we do not yet have numbers for 2006 that are available.

Justice committee  I'll let John let you know how we count our homicides, but just so you have the numbers, we had 107 gang-related homicides in 2005. In Ontario, the number was 31 gang-related homicides. That gives you the 2005 data. Perhaps John can speak to how we count homicides.

Justice committee  We mentioned there are three different sources of police-reported data we're using. Our homicide data has 100% national coverage.

Justice committee  Bill C-17 was legislation put in place. However, all we can do is to plot where these things happened. Why the legislation was brought into place is not something we can speak to.

Justice committee  No, 1991 was the peak year.

Justice committee  Well, it was certainly one of the higher rates we've seen since 1991. We know that the number of handgun homicides has been up in six of the last seven years. The rate has been stable in a couple of those years, but the number of handgun homicides has been up in six of the last s

Justice committee  At Statistics Canada we have not done any kind of evaluative study in any way. What we have done in terms of providing information is to have assembled various trend information, which you see as part of this deck as well. That's the type of information we've been putting forth.

Justice committee  What we can tell you with our corrections information, although I do not have the figure with me today, is what the average cost is of housing someone in custody. We can provide that cost figure. That's what we can—

Justice committee  In fact, we do have number, and John has them with him, actually.

Justice committee  We don't have any data that speaks to the overall cost of crime.

Justice committee  I'll allow my colleagues to speak to that.

Justice committee  I'm not sure if I should respond. On slides 5 and 6 you can see some of the trends in the data. Now, the purpose for plotting some of the legislation in slide 6 is not to imply a causal link, because there are many factors that can impact these kinds of trends. But what it does

Justice committee  What we can speak to is the fact that as you can see on slide 5, prior to 1985, shootings were more popular, in terms of methods to commit homicides. But after that point, stabbings and shootings each accounted for about a third of homicides annually. It fluctuates from year to y

Justice committee  Yes, there are countries that we have not included on this particular list. We were only trying to give some particular reference points. But we've put out a publication with a more complete list of countries, and we can certainly provide you with a reference to that. In fact,

Justice committee  I can ask John to speak to you about the way in which we collect information in terms of gang-related homicides, and so forth. He can also speak to you in regard to the details of the way in which we collect data. Through our uniform crime report statistics, we are collecting p