Montreal will host a forum on youth violence, following the murders of several young people in the city over the past year.
The forum will be composed of three days of events over several weeks, beginning with an online meeting Thursday with non-profits and representatives from the education sector.
The city will run an online workshop in mid-March involving young people who will discuss ways to reduce violence among their peers.
And on March 31, forum participants will gather in person to come up with concrete recommendations on how to address the problem.
Mayor Valérie Plante says the plan is to create a “Montreal model” to reduce violence among young people.
Earlier this month, Lucas Gaudet, a 16-year-old high school student, was stabbed and killed following an altercation outside a high school on Montreal’s West Island. In January, Amir Benayad, 17, was gunned down in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough in Montreal’s first homicide of 2022.
Last December, Hani Ouahdi, 20, was shot dead in a car in the city’s east-end Anjou district. In mid-November, Thomas Trudel, 16, was shot in the St-Michel borough as he walked home from a park.
Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, 16, died after being stabbed outside his school last October. Two people have been arrested in his death. And last February, Meriem Boundaoui, 15, was killed in a drive-by shooting in the St-Leonard borough.
“We’ve all been shocked by what happened in the last months, having young people die the way they did and it’s not acceptable,” Plante told reporters Monday.
“The idea of the forum is to mobilize all the sectors to look at the best practices, to share knowledge, to look at new ideas, to think outside the box to create a Montreal model.”