Fight against armed violence | Ottawa pays 42 million to Quebec

Ottawa pays nearly $42 million to the Government of Quebec to “support prevention and intervention activities” related to the fight against armed violence and street gangs. A good part of these funds will go into the Centaur strategy, in which six police forces in the province participate.

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

“If we’re here, it’s because there are events happening in neighborhoods here and elsewhere in Quebec and Canada. Too many people are victims of gun violence. That’s enough. To see these torn lives, to hear the tears of parents, of citizens who are afraid for their children, is enough, ”hammered Thursday the federal lieutenant for Quebec, Pablo Rodriguez, at a press conference in Rivière-des- Meadows.

Mr. Rodriguez worried that gun violence was “increasingly random, as if it were harmless to shoot someone”. “Prevention is part of the solution. […] With today’s announcement, I think things will really change,” he said.

The $41.8 million will be disbursed through the Fund to Build Safer Communities, a federal program valued at $250 million that was established in March 2022 to prevent gun violence and help young people “make good choices.”

In addition to funding the community network and training workers, the money will mainly be used “to strengthen the efforts made in the Centaur initiative”, a vast cell of Quebec police forces to fight against armed violence set up in September 2021. In June, The Press reported that between 1^er October 2021 and the 1^er Last June, the six main police forces participating in the Centaure strategy (those of Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, Quebec, Gatineau and the Sûreté du Québec) seized 394 firearms, mostly handguns. At that time, arrests outnumbered weapons seizures. There were already 426.

Root causes of crime

In a statement, the federal government said Thursday that its goal is to “address the root causes of crime”, arguing that “gang-related violence and shootings in public places are on the rise. in Quebec”, and that it is therefore urgent to act.

“It starts with measures at our borders”, argued Federal Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, saying he wanted to use more “new technologies” to fight against the circulation of weapons, in order “to carry out examinations on all cars” crossing the Canadian border. “There are challenges and we have to go further, but we continue to make a lot of progress at the border. Later this year, we will launch a buyout program to remove them from our communities once and for all,” he insisted.

This announcement comes as Montreal is once again witnessing an outbreak of violence. A young man with serious mental health issues suspected in the series of murders in the past two days in Laval and Montreal was shot and killed by officers on Thursday morning, police sources confirmed.

He is the main suspect in connection with the murders committed in the last 24 hours which claimed the lives of three innocent victims, according to our information. He would have acted without an accomplice. The most recent victim of this series of homicides is a 22-year-old Laval resident. He was moving on a skateboard in the Laval-des-Rapides district before being targeted by gunfire. In all likelihood, he was targeted at random.

Two men had been murdered an hour apart on Tuesday evening. The first victim is André Fernand Lemieux, a 64-year-old man, father of Quebec boxer David Lemieux. The second episode of violence occurred an hour later on rue Meilleur, near rue Sauvé. Again, officers found a man lying on the ground with gunshot wounds. This is Mohamed Salah Belhaj, an intervention officer at the Albert-Prévost mental health hospital, 48 years old.