Drimonis: Youth crime is serious. Blaming immigration is laughable

Montreal Gazette

2 days ago

In a recent television interview, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon attempted to establish a direct link between immigration and the involvement of minors in crimes.
'Immigrant criminal groups are bringing new and especially aggressive methods to Quebec,' he stated.
'(Gangs have) names like Arab Power, so there's no doubt about their ethnocultural affiliation. Recruitment is done on an ethnocultural basis.'
The PQ leader's main concern, he said, lies with street gangs' recruitment efforts primarily targeting minors, in light of a recent report showing a third of homicides in Quebec this year have involved young people age 21 and under.
His concerns aren't entirely unfounded. Gangs are indeed luring younger and younger victims into their fold. Montreal's Maghrebi community already raised the alarm about criminals recruiting their youth.
There's nothing wrong with a political leader reacting to an uptick in violence, seeking solutions. Choosing to frame it as an issue linked to immigration, though, is problematic. And selective.
It's not like homegrown gangs with violent track records haven't been operating in Quebec for decades, or like we don't have our own share of locally produced groups messing with the public's sense of security.
Just weeks ago, four men were arrested in an alleged terrorist plot. As suggested by their names alone — Marc-Aurèle Chabot, Simon Angers-Audet, Raphaël Lagacé and Matthew Forbes — they're from the far-away, exotic land of Quebec. Canada has a creeping far-right extremism problem, and Quebec is not exempt.
Yet, to my recollection, I've never heard the PQ leader express concerns about groups like the Fédération des Québécois de souche, Pégida Québec, La Meute or Storm Alliance. Perhaps their names elicit less terror than Arab Power, which St-Pierre Plamondon took pains to mention in his interview. Why the specific focus on the above group, while the Hells Angels have reportedly been associated with gangs recruiting minors for decades?
And why is the fact that gang recruitment is made on an ethnocultural basis suddenly concerning to the PQ leader? This phenomenon is neither new nor introduced by recent Arab immigration.
The West End Gang, Rock Machine, the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels have often recruited on an ethnonationalist basis and have long wreaked violence in this province.
Yves (Apache) Trudeau, Georges (Bo-Boy) Beaulieu, Maurice (Mom) Boucher and St-Henri's infamous Dubois Brothers all sound very, how shall we say, homegrown.
Criminal gangs often do have an ethnonationalist element. But the common denominators in most cases of gang violence are societal alienation, poverty and lack of opportunity. Not immigration.
Taking very real problems — the recruitment of young people into gangs and the rise of criminality among minors — and using them to imply that demographic changes are the culprit is not an evidence-based finding. It didn't take long for right-wing pundits to call St-Pierre Plamondon 'brave' for 'daring to state the obvious: mass immigration has contributed to insecurity.'
Politically opportunistic rhetoric flings the door wide open to those desperately wanting to link multiculturalism or a rise in immigration to a rise in criminality. Something that's blatantly untrue. Numerous studies, including a 2023 McGill-led study, show that immigrants are neither predisposed to more crime nor tied to an increase in crime rates.
Mentioning immigration only when you want to link it to a slew of ills Quebec is suffering from is problematic. A lack of affordable housing? Immigration. Quebec's low birth rate? Immigration. An increase in gang violence? Immigration.
This dog-whistling can be perniciously subtle, allowing people's inherent confirmation bias to fill in gaps and interpret a link that supports their pre-existing beliefs. It's helpful to no one, except perhaps politicians wishing to capitalize on fear.