Greater Sudbury will be receiving $2 million in funding for the prevention of gun violence, this according to a federal funding announcement made at the YMCA of Northeastern Ontario in downtown Sudbury on Aug. 2.
Although he was scheduled to attended, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was unavailable at the last minute, and Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe made the announcement on his behalf, alongside Mayor Brian Bigger, Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré and the YMCA President and CEO Helen Francis.
The funding is part of the $250-million Building Safer Communities Fund (BSCF), which was first announced in March. The $2 million, said a release from the ministers office, will “help to address the underlying social conditions that give rise to crime and support community-led projects to combat violence among young people who are involved in gangs, or are at risk of joining them.”
The money will flow to local community organizations to be named later. Lapointe noted the announcement was a “commence agenda,” or starting point, for the funding.
Rising gun and gang violence is a problem in Northern Ontario, said Lapointe.
“The allotment in communities is based upon the crime rates,” said Lapointe. “Those communities that are seeing increased crime rates, that's where the determination of funding was made.”
Lapointe spoke of rising violence in Sudbury, as well as in North Bay and on Manitoulin Island, specifically M’Chigeeng, where recent gun violence has been an issue for the community.
“The funding today is reflective of the kind of pressures that we've seen here, what our own community takes on with increasing gun and drug gangs,” Lapointe said.
The prevention aspects of the funding are what will make it work so well, she added, in that the city will distribute the money to local organizations working to prevent gun and gang violence and set young people up for success in life, she said.
“To make that a reality, we need to tackle the root of the problem, the conditions that spur someone, especially a young person to join a gang or otherwise fall in with crime.”
Lapointe said that no single initiative or measure holds the solution to gun violence and to address the challenge of this scale, “we need to fight it on a number of fronts at the national, provincial and community levels and address crime as a continuum, one that begins by addressing underlying causes and stopping violence before it even starts.”
Law enforcement reports the gangs from big cities have been expanding into towns and cities across northeastern Ontario, especially in the last five years, said Lapointe, and she added that this is closely linked with the ongoing toxic supply and drug crisis, what she called “one of the most significant public health issues in Canada's recent history.”
“Drawn by bigger profits, gangs bring drugs like fentanyl and heroin into our communities. And they also bring violence. Here in Sudbury crime is going up.”
Lapointe said that in the past few years, the crime severity index (a way to monitor the severity level of police-reported crime) has spiked from 66.62 in 2016 to 87.83 in 2020.
“Violent crime is even worse, and Sudbury isn't alone,” she said.
In North Bay, said Lapointe, police have seized more firearms at this point in this year than they did in all of 2021.
“The Anishinaabe Aski police service, the largest First Nations police force in Canada, recently reported an exponential increase in gang members from bigger cities trafficking drugs in the 35 communities they patrol.”
The federal government, said Serré, will be using this funding as a key point in the overarching strategy. The other parts include the ban on assault-style weapons like the AR-15, which will soon have a buy-back program; Mendicino announced a proposed pricing model on Aug. 1. Additionally, the recent introduction of Bill C-21, which includes a national freeze on handgun ownership, new ‘red flag’ laws to stop domestic violence, and tougher penalties for organized crime are what Serré said will form a comprehensive strategy, at least from a federal perspective.
From a municipal standpoint, Bigger told those in attendance that the money was greatly needed.
“Our entire tax levy is $330 million annually and the greatest subgroup, the police budget, last year was $65 million dollars,” said Bigger. “It’s essentially funded off of the municipal tax levy, so I have to tell you, this two million is very, very significant in our ability to address some really pressing issues.”
One of the groups that will be working with the funding, with specifics announced later, is the YMCA of Northeastern Ontario. President and CEO, Helen Francis, spoke to a decline in the number of white boys and young men involved with the justice system, but a rise just about everywhere else.
“Over the last decade, there has been a 34-per-cent reduction in youth in the criminal justice system, however, the rate of decline has been much higher for white boys and young men,” said Francis.
The number of girls in the criminal justice system has risen by 20 per cent, she said, the number of Indigenous youth by 26 per cent, black male offenders by 41 per cent, Black girls and young women by 46 per cent, and Indigenous girls and young women by 60 per cent.
“These numbers are just outstanding in a negative way. And the funds that have been announced today will help us address this.”
The YMCA offers opportunities, said Francis, and those opportunities, even a youth dance, are bridges away from crime.
“We pride ourselves on being able to do that collaboratively with numerous community partners,” she said. “We were designed to enhance pro-social attitudes and prevent the growing number of youth in the community who are involved in or are at-risk of being involved in criminal activity. As such, we are thrilled to hear of this funding announcement and to work with our government partners, including the City of Greater Sudbury to support these initiatives and build safer communities.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized, including the Black, Indigenous, newcomer and Francophone communities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ and issues of the downtown core.
