Ontario announces $16.4M in funding to combat guns and gangs

Yokregion.com
March 27, 2019
Rob Ferguson

Ontario is launching $16.4 million worth of new efforts to combat the scourge of guns and gangs over the next two years with eight measures that will be expanded if they prove effective, Attorney General Caroline Mulroney says.

Piggybacking on $11 million in federal funding, the province is creating a guns and gangs enforcement unit to help local police and prosecutors, Mulroney told a news conference Tuesday with Community Safety and Corrections Minister Sylvia Jones.

Caroline Mulroney announced the Ford government plan to combat gun and gang violence Tuesday.

Other elements of the program include improved training for corrections officers to secure better intelligence on gangs operating in jails and crack down on contraband smuggling, “justice centres” in three cities to focus on prevention of gang activity, examining discipline in 10 school boards and efforts aimed at keeping Indigenous youth out of gangs.

“We’ll be monitoring them and we’ll be able to scale them up over time if we find they’re having real results on the ground in communities across the province,” Mulroney said.

The benchmark for further action will be “feedback” from corrections officers, police and community organizations, Jones added.

The programs build on $25 million announced by the province last August.

Jones said this latest effort involves her ministry, Mulroney’s, education and children and youth services in a “multi-pronged approach.”

“It’s pretty clear as you start to drill down on this issue that we need to deal with the young people who are being recruited and dragged in,” she said.

The justice centres will be in northwest and northeast Toronto, London and Kenora, with the goal of co-ordinating police and the judicial system with health and social service agencies.

“These centres will integrate justice facilities with prevention and intervention supports to hold individuals accountable while connecting them with services that prevent crime and break the cycle of offending,” the Progressive Conservative government said in a statement.

The enforcement unit of police and prosecutors will be available to help police forces across the province, said Jones, noting “criminals don’t respect municipal boundaries.”

Government officials refused to say how much of the $16.4 million is earmarked for each of the eight initiatives in the program.

Mulroney said the government will develop an “investigations fund” to support major operations by multiple police services and begin a pilot program in 14 classrooms in 10 school boards to monitor data on suspensions and explusions to make sure they are not “disproportionately” impacting particular groups of students, such as those who are Indigenous, Black, belong to other ethno-racial groups or have disabilities.

There will also be a “youth violence prevention and resilience program” supporting high risk teens and young adults up to age 29 with social services.

A similar program will be aimed at Indigenous youth in partnership with various First Nations police forces.

As well, the government is establishing an intervention and “exit program” for Indigenous women aimed at keeping them out of gangs or helping them leave gangs.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the Ford government is playing “shell games” with money.

“If they were so concerned about young people, then they wouldn’t have cut some of the school programs” such as the “focus on youth” program that provides year-round jobs in needy neighbourhoods, Horwath said.

In Toronto, city council is still struggling to address the root causes of gun violence. Last July, the city announced an anti-gun violence plan that relied on the provincial and federal governments for funding.

Although the city and Toronto Police applied for a combined $55.3 million, that plan remains largely unfunded and only $6.5 million was received from the federal government for community supports. Another $2.5 million was approved by council to help youth.

It’s unclear how or if the new funding announced Tuesday aligns with the city's anti-violence plan.

Alvin Curling, a former provincial cabinet minister who co-authored a report on the roots of youth violence, said there is still not adequate funding to address what was recommended to the province more than a decade ago.

“There are some governments who like the enforcement part ... emphasized more,” Curling said. Noting it’s not clear yet how the government plans to allocate the funds, he said focusing efforts on sending more young people to prison only compounds the problem when they are released and need support to not fall back into the criminal cycle.

“If you stop putting them there you wouldn’t have this imbalance,” he said. “Trying to arrest people or jail people out of this situation ... we’re increasing youth social costs on the other end.”

Tuesday’s announcement is not Toronto-centric and will not affect the complement of prosecutors assigned to the provincial guns and gangs initiative, said an insider working in that unit who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the government.

That unit was initiated as a pilot project by then-attorney general Michael Bryant in the wake of the Jane Creba murder on Yonge St. in 2005. Working out of a covert location, the Crown attorneys are involved in the investigation and prosecution of major criminal organization projects targeting street gangs.