Thank you. So this is an issue that has come up time and time again for years. And as we're seeing more drugs in communities and more housing units being used as the base for selling those drugs, there's action that needs to be taken. And I'm very familiar with this situation as this is occurring in my community. There's a number of things that can be done. You know, the RCMP do what they can. They've had a number of their tools taken away over the years by changes to the Criminal Code or by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. And so I put thought into what can we do as a territorial government to give them more tools or to give communities more tools as well, it doesn't just have to be the RCMP. So some of those things are things like the SCAN legislation, safer communities and neighbourhoods, which allows, after an investigation, for a premise to be shut down. So we're not going through the eviction process. We're shutting down a building that is causing a public harm. So that's one option. There are also changes that can be made to the housing policies. I often hear concerns that there's been, you know, half a dozen eviction orders issued by the rental officer for a building that is a known drug house, but it's not acted upon until the seventh eviction order. And so we need to figure out what are we going to prioritize here. We don't want to make people homeless, but we can't put up with certain types of behaviour, and that's one of the types of behaviour that we can't put up with. So there are things that can be done, simple changes to our policies as well as additional legislation. Thank you.
R.J. Simpson on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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