Lower Mainland gang violence attracting Ottawa’s attention

OTTAWA (NEWS 1130) — The gang conflict in the Lower Mainland has gotten so bad that Canada’s Public Safety Minister took part in meetings this week aimed at coming up with potential solutions.

With 20 gang-related homicides in the region this year alone, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair joined a virtual meeting Tuesday between local politicians, police, and community organizations.

Fleetwood-Port Kells Liberal MP Ken Hardie insists anti-gang youth programs are working — but advocates say expanding them could make a difference.

“We have to sit down then and look at best practices, what we can learn from other jurisdictions, and come up with a better idea of what more could be done,” he says. “But that’s work in progress right now.”

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Hardie says the programs available now are calling for more coordination, resources, funding to get their work done.

“Many of them have waitlists of kids that are looking for attention and families that want help, and they simply don’t have the resources right now to provide that,” Hardie explains.

The MP adds it’s time leaders look to other areas in the province, and even other countries, to find a better strategy to resolve the gang conflict.

“I really think that the federal government, the provincial government, and the communities have to take a very, very close look at how we manage the drug issues. Illicit drugs are treated mostly as a legal justice policing issue. Whereas there are places in the world that have been a lot more successful … treated it as a health issue,” Hardie suggests. “We have never been able to succeed in arresting our way out of this problem. So I think it’s time to try something different.”

Hardie adds his advice to parents in the Lower Mainland is to “talk to your kid.”

“What we’re seeing is an increasingly younger profile of people getting into gangs.”

According to a statement from Minister Blair’s office, last year the government announced $250 million for over five years to support municipal and Indigenous anti-gang programming and prevention programs for at-risk youth. That’s in addition to a $327 million investment for over five years to support initiatives that work to reduce gun crime and criminal gang activities.

“If you just try to arrest your way out of these problems, the problem never goes away. We need to support law enforcement, we need to hold these violent criminals to account to remove them from our society, but we also need to make sure we support families and support kids to make better choices so there isn’t another supply of young people who get involved in gang activity and contribute to the violence that the Lower Mainland has been experiencing.”

This week, Vancouver Police and the provincial anti-gang unit took the unusual step of releasing names and pictures of gangsters, warning we should avoid them for our own safety.

– With files from Sonia Aslam and Cormac Mac Sweeney