François Legault does not take seriously the problem of armed violence in Montreal, criticized the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), Dominique Anglade. Present on the ground Thursday — unlike him, she says — she wants to see more police on the streets and a lot more funding for violence prevention.
In short, money is the nerve of the war against armed violence in Montreal according to the chef.
Early Thursday morning, she moved past the pizzeria on rue Saint-Denis where a man was shot dead in broad daylight on Tuesday, just 30 minutes after another was shot dead at the Rockland shopping center in Ville Mont -Royal.
According to her, the first thing to do is to be present on the ground to see the situation in the face, thus criticizing Prime Minister Legault who prefers, she says, to manage the crisis with “zooms and tweets”: “ He doesn’t take it seriously. »
“That’s not how we’re going to resolve the situation. We will solve it by being on the ground, by bringing concrete solutions. »
For her, these solutions require an increase in the number of police officers on the streets of Montreal. Their hiring will be possible by giving financial means to the metropolis, in particular by reviewing the financial agreement with the City.
This funding must be recurrent, says Ms. Anglade.
She joins there one of the requests of the mayoress Valérie Plante, who declared Wednesday to be “tanned” to receive money “by the piece” to fight against armed violence.
But also, the leader of the PLQ wants to focus on prevention: she is targeting $90 million in funding to give socio-community organizations the means to do their work by supporting young people in difficulty as well as their parents, often overwhelmed by the situation.
In short, it is targeting one dollar of investment in prevention for each dollar injected into “Centaur”, the Quebec Strategy to Combat Armed Violence.
She explains that these sums would help keep young people off the streets, get them out of the grip of criminal groups or ensure that they have the tools they need to avoid entering the cycle of violence.
On Wednesday, in reaction to these two most recent murders which shook the metropolis, the mayor Valérie Plante also spoke of prevention and of increasing the police force.
François Legault promised the same day that his government “will not skimp on the means to restore order and protect the citizens” by supporting the police forces so that the violence stops. No concrete announcement has yet been made to explain what will be undertaken, the mayor indicating that they are to come.
In December, however, Quebec announced that it would invest $52 million to redouble its prevention efforts in its fight against armed violence.
The opposition parties in Quebec also seem to agree on the means chosen to reduce armed violence in Montreal, especially with regard to prevention.
This is the case of Québec solidaire (QS), which noted in a press release Thursday that the police forces are currently overwhelmed by psychosocial work in the field, dealing in particular with people experiencing homelessness or in mental health crisis. .
To enable Montreal police forces to concentrate their efforts on the repression of organized crime, QS proposes to allocate more psychosocial resources and adequately refinance the community sector.
Québec solidaire also intends to put pressure on the federal government to accelerate the ban on handguns, a request also made by Valérie Plante.