Every Sunday as the sun sets over her coastal home, Sandi Bogle looks out at the water before lighting a candle for her nephew, Bjorn Brown.
“He was amazing,” she said. “He used to come and spend a lot of time with me and my kids. We used to go on holiday together. He had a whole future ahead of him, and it was just taken away.”
Three years have passed since knife-wielding thugs killed Brown, 23, an aspiring musician. No arrests have been made, police have not speculated about a motive, and his family’s grief remains raw.
Sadly, they’re not alone.
In the time since Bjorn’s killing, Britain’s knife crime crisis has accelerated. More than 45,000 blade-related offenses — the highest number on record — were committed in England and Wales last year, according to official government statistics. Now, as the United Kingdom plans to emerge from lockdown, there are fears of a new surge in fatal stabbings.
Gang rivalries revisited after months of confinement, social media scores that need to be settled, even the normalization of masks — in post-pandemic Britain, there will be no shortage of criminal triggers.
Police shot and killed a knife-wielding man in a hotel in Glasgow, Scotland, after he went on a rampage that left six people, including a police officer, hospitalized on June 27.
Police forensics officers at the scene of a fatal stabbing in Bexley in southeast London on Oct. 13.Dominic Lipinski / AP file
The suspect was identified as a Sudanese immigrant named Badreddin Abadlla Adam, 28.
Adam was staying in the city center hotel, along with about 100 other asylum-seekers, after having been moved there during the pandemic. Authorities say they are investigating.
John Sunderland, a retired police superintendent, spent two decades confronting the conditions in which violence ferments, and he knows all too well the agony it leaves behind.
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“I remember the sound of his family initially singing hymns and then just beginning to wail — an incredibly haunting sound,” he said, recalling the murder of Kodjo Yenga, 16, of West London, whose fatal stabbing in 2007 signaled the start of the city’s knife emergency.
In the years that have followed, the crisis’s racial dimension have come under scrutiny. In 2018, over a third of London’s serious youth violence offenders — and a quarter of the victims — were Black, official statistics revealed.
While that suggests that the city’s Black community (which constitutes 13 percent of London’s population) is disproportionately blighted by youth violence, it’s important to note that 2 in 5 serious youth violence offenders and victims were of white heritage. Likewise, statistical analysis indicates that, outside London, ethnicity and violent crime figures correlate far closer with population proportions.
Experts like Sunderland attribute Britain’s blade attack epidemic to the effects of poverty and a lack of prospects more than race.
The links between social deprivation and knife crime are well documented. In neighborhoods where unemployment is high and economic mobility is low, violent behavior breeds. When funding for local community-minded programs is cut, the spiral of hopelessness and aggression intensifies. That, Sunderland said, is why the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic is so concerning.
“So many of society’s natural safety nets for the boys and young men caught up in knife crime have already disappeared in most parts of the country,” he said. “The cost of austerity has always been greatest for those least able to bear it.”
This point was made painfully clear last year, when new local government statistics revealed that three-quarters of London’s most violent boroughs were among the 10 most deprived and that all had higher proportions of child poverty than the city’s average.
From left, Sarah Jones, a member of Parliament, with children who have been affected by knife crime, delivers a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s home at 10 Downing Street last month. David Mirzoeff / Press Association via AP file
The data reflected an “appalling side effect” of the government austerity, Mayor Sadiq Khan said, adding that “you can’t cut police officers, public services, preventative measures and ignore the most vulnerable people in our country at the same time as keeping crime low.”
James Alexander, a criminology expert at London Metropolitan University, reached a similar conclusion. Inner-city housing estates are “conveyor belts” of violence, his research indicated, with a constant turnover of cash-strapped youngsters turning to crime. As Britain’s lockdown lifts and the economic aftershocks of COVID-19 are felt, the process is likely to accelerate, he said.
“Going into next year, we’re almost certain to see a rebounding of knife crime and youth violence. … There’ll be more pressure on young people to make money” illegally, he said.
Tackling the surge requires a systemic approach, Alexander said, one that promotes collaboration to heal community breakdown.
“When you talk to the parents, they feel very isolated,” he said. “Instead of going ‘I’m a youth worker, I’ve got the solution,’ [outreach programs] need to be more collaborative. They need to say, ‘I’m a youth worker, let’s help develop the solution together.'”
One program, the so-called violence reduction unit, holds the hopes of many. Pioneered by American epidemiologists in the crime-ridden Chicago of the 1990s, the program addresses street violence through the prism of public health, treating it as a symptom of deprivation and poverty.
Rather than focus simply on hard-power policing and custodial punishment, city authorities started working to improve the prospects of would-be criminals, offering them an alternative to gang membership with job opportunities and education.
Officials in Glasgow adopted a similar strategy. Guided by a simple principle — that violence is preventable, not inevitable — the city’s violence reduction unit worked with schools, health groups and social services to disrupt the root causes of knife crime, giving youngsters a springboard to build better, nonviolent lives. Twelve years after its inception in 2005, Glaswegian homicide rates had fallen by half.
Might London benefit from a similar program? Its mayor thinks so, and last year he launched the city’s own violence reduction unit. “I am leading London’s response to understanding the causes of violent crime and working to stop it spreading,” Khan said.
Anti-knife crime campaigners on Westminster Bridge in central London, calling for action over recent bloodshed in April. Stefan Rousseau / Press Association via AP file
But not everyone is convinced.
“Would it not be better to go to somewhere — maybe Germany — that doesn’t have such a big knife crime or serious youth violence problem and ask: ‘Why do they not have the problem? What can we copy from what they’re doing?'” Alexander asked.
Sunderland, the former police superintendent, has reservations, too. While the violence reduction unit formula is promising, he worries that — having eschewed Glasgow’s rigorously apolitical approach — the program in London is doomed to fail.
“When you have political leadership, the approach becomes partisan [and] short term in its focus, because it’s very difficult to get politicians to look beyond the horizon of the next election,” he said.
For the family of Bjorn Brown, that is disheartening news. Deprived of justice, they seek solace in the hope that, one day, others might be spared their pain.
“We have to keep talking. It doesn’t take just one person to build a child, it takes a village, it takes a community, it takes the country,” said his aunt, Sandi.
“I don’t want my nephew to have died for nothing.”
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
