The growing tide of gang-related shootings in Canada is linked to drug trade problem that has been growing "for many, many years," Canada's public safety minister said Sunday.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan told CTV's Question Period the shootings are a symptom of drug trade-related crimes, which he contends have not been treated seriously enough by previous governments.
"While under previous governments, people have pretended that there is no problem, where they have pretended that: 'You know what, drugs are not a big deal, you don't have to spend a lot of resources combating drugs.'" he said.
Metro Vancouver is struggling through a spate of shootings that local police officials suggest may be linked to the Mexican drug trade. This weekend, at least three incidents have left a woman dead and two men injured. In the latest, a man was shot in the chest in Burnaby early Sunday morning.
Gun violence has killed more than a dozen people in the area since January. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has called for a regional police force that would look at the entire Metro Vancouver area, similar to the police departments of Toronto and Montreal.
RCMP say guns being smuggled across the border are fuelling the violence. It's believed at least half of the guns used in the Metro Vancouver shootings have come from the United States.
But Van Loan said that with "85 per cent of the people in our prisons" suffering from substance abuse problems, there needs to be a greater emphasis on tackling drug-related problems, as well as the related crimes.
"That tells me that involvement in drugs leads to criminal activity," Van Loan said. "They aren't there for drug crimes, they are there with drug problems, having committed other crimes."
The public safety minister said the Conservative government is taking steps to crack down on drug trade-related crimes and to give police the tools they need to enforce the law.
"We're taking steps with our national anti-drug strategy, with our legislation to attack drug crimes, with our new bill to take on organized crime," he said.
"Things that needed to be done a long time ago, that haven't been done, we've got to get those things into law and then the police will have the real tools they need to begin the long and difficult battle of combating organized crime."
He said the government has provided money for more police recruitment, drug treatment, as well as anti-gang initiatives.
Van Loan spoke to Question Period from Washington, where he is spending three days in meetings with some of his U.S. counterparts, including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, who is the assistant to U.S. President Barack Obama on homeland security and counterterrorism matters.
