Conservatives pledge to create official list of criminal gangs

The Conservatives brought outformer public safety minister StockwellDayThursday toannounce that if re-elected on Oct. 19, they wouldcreate a formal list of criminal gangs, similar to the one that exists for designated terrorist groups.

The listwould remove the need for the Crown to prove in individual court cases that a specific gang is a criminal organization.

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Daymade the announcement in Surrey, B.C.,alongsideConservative candidates DianneWatts, the former mayor of Surrey,HarpreetSingh andSuchaThind.

Daywas public safety minister from 2006to 2008 and held several other cabinet portfolios after that. Herepresented the B.C. riding ofOkanagan-Coquihallafrom 2000 to 2011 first for the Canadian Alliance and then the Conservatives.

A Conservative governmentwould put an additional$2.5 million into the Youth Gang Prevention Fund,originallylaunched in2006,to help crack down on gang-related crime and steer youth away from a criminal lifestyle, Day said.

Last May, the federal government promised to hire 100 additional Mounties for Surrey and spend millions of dollarsto fight a low-level, drug-fuelled turf war that has set offscores of shootings and killed one man.

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In a statement, Watts who, as mayor of Surrey, called for a province-wide approach to tackling the gang problem said that neither the Liberals nor the NDP would make fighting crime a priority.

"Justin Trudeau's sole criminal justice priority is to change the law to allow the sale of marijuana in corner stores," said Watts.

"Justin just doesn't understand the importance of cracking down on organized criminal gangs."

The NDP, under Thomas Mulcair, would make communities less safe, she argued.

"Mulcair and the NDP oppose our actions to increase penalties for gangs and dangerous criminals because they wrongly put the so-called rights of criminals ahead of the rights of victims," she said.