The two murders that occurred in less than 30 minutes, Tuesday in broad daylight in downtown Montreal and Mount Royal, are the subject of an uncomfortable political recovery. Even if the resurgence of gun violence is alarming in Montreal, it does not justify simplism.
On the one hand, the Liberal leader, Dominique Anglade, aroused unease by making a press briefing at the crime scene on rue Saint-Denis, criticizing Prime Minister François Legault for not taking armed violence seriously. She was talking here about a government that plans to invest $150 million over five years in the operation CENTAUR against gun violence.
On the other hand, conservative leader Éric Duhaime brazenly magnified the marginal influence of the social movement to “defund” and disarm the police as a contributing factor to social disorder.
Meanwhile, in Montreal, the Police Brotherhood and the Plante administration are engaged in a little war of numbers over the size of the police force. When it comes to public safety, Mayor Plante always walks on eggshells. She is harshly judged by the police union. His ill-advised decision to support the candidacy of Will Prosper in the borough of Montreal-North despite his unforgivable blunders committed when he was a police officer, as well as his penchant for the community approach and local policing, however necessary, make she an eternal suspect.
And yet, Mayor Plante is also asking for additional staff and the end of piecework funding for specialized squads. The Brotherhood would do better to make an ally of it instead of maintaining a war of numbers which gives the impression that only the police force counts for the union.
The Montreal Police Department announced Thursday at the end of the day a major operation of visibility and repression which will serve to fight against armed violence, and which involves in particular a reinforcement of the Eclipse squad. A new squad dedicated exclusively to solving the problem would be about to see the light of day. Very good. This is an important part of the solution. The increased police presence will not, however, solve in a snap of the fingers this disturbing phenomenon of the trivialization of the culture of firearms and the social disintegration that many North American cities are experiencing in the post-pandemic world.
On the eve of the election campaign, let’s hope that the main parties flesh out their thinking and that they present us with multifaceted strategies. Strategies that will give pride of place to prevention, community action, the revitalization of red light districts, the strengthening of collaboration between police organizations, the tracking of arms traffickers, etc. The problem goes beyond the borders of Montreal and Quebec. He challenges Ottawa, and the indolent Parole Board of Canada, which released an arms smuggler after a year in prison on a five-year sentence. This is an issue important enough for elected officials and association representatives to rise above the fray. At the end of the vote on October 3, this is an issue that would lend itself very well to a vast project, on the model of the Socio-economic Summit of 1996 or the Summit on Higher Education in 2013. We need all the stakeholders to silence the guns and live in peace.