{"id":586831,"date":"2026-04-06T23:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/586831\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T23:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:25:13","slug":"feds-renew-funding-for-building-safer-communities-fund-in-ottawa-amidst-rise-in-youth-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/586831\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds renew funding for Building Safer Communities Fund in Ottawa amidst rise in youth violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

The federal government has renewed funding for the Building Safer Communities Fund, and the City of Ottawa is planning to use that money to divert vulnerable youth from a life of crime<\/a> and gang involvement.<\/p>\n

The fund, which was first announced in 2020, aims to help local communities prevent gun and gang violence.<\/a> The program was formally launched in March 2022, and the City of Ottawa is one of the recipients under the original allocation.<\/p>\n

That funding had been scheduled to end on March 31, but federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree<\/a> announced that the Liberal government will extend that funding by $157.5 million over the next three years.<\/p>\n

Around $6.7 million of that money will be allocated to the City of Ottawa to support the Priority Neighbourhood Youth Initiative, a program that aims to deliver upstream programs and resources to prevent at-risk youth from joining gangs and being involved in crime.<\/p>\n

The city previously received more than $6.6 million through the BSCF to run this program, according to federal documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized that in order to address the root causes of youth violence, especially involving gangs and guns, we cannot do it by arresting people into submission. What we needed to do was to ensure that we have upstream investments,\u201d Anandasangaree said at a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday, March 31, which the Ottawa Citizen monitored through a CPAC livestream.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that we couldn\u2019t just police our way out of these challenges. We had to address what was causing the crime in the first place: poverty, lack of housing and social isolation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard from mayors and frontline workers from across the country, and they\u2019ve all been very clear. We cannot let this momentum stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah Taylor, the City of Ottawa\u2019s director of community safety and well-being policy and analytics, said the money will be used to support partnerships with several community partners across the city to provide youth violence prevention programs, intervention and outreach. That includes the BGC, the Centre for Resilience and Social Development, the Social Planning Council of Ottawa, the city\u2019s Recreation, Cultural and Facility Services and the Integrated Neighbourhood Service Team.<\/p>\n

The money will also be used to fund community safety programming in \u201cpriority neighbourhoods,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis announcement aligns with ongoing efforts to prevent gun and gang violence by addressing root causes through upstream community and youth\u2011based initiatives. The City will continue to work with the federal government to understand next steps as details become available,\u201d she wrote in an emailed statement to the Ottawa Citizen.<\/p>\n

Taylor added that previous funding has helped support more than 85,000 youth and community engagement and outreach touchpoints outside of programs or training events. It also helped more than 50 recreational and employment training programs, as well as more than 80 youth employment positions and paid participation programs.<\/p>\n

The funding boost comes after youth violence in Ottawa has trended upwards in recent years.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the most recent data available on the OPS\u2019 website, there were 640 reported cases of youth violence, a seven per cent uptick from the 600 cases reported in 2023.<\/p>\n

However, the number of police-reported youth crime declined from 1,503 cases in 2023 to 1,331 cases in 2024, an 11 per cent decrease year-over-year.<\/p>\n

Youth property crime also trended downwards, with 457 reported cases in 2024, a 21 per cent decrease from 577 reported cases in 2023.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the youth crime rate decreased by four per cent from 2023 to 2024 after two consecutive yearly increases in 2022 and 2023. According to data from the federal Department of Justice,\u00a0 the youth crime rate was 2,791 per 100,000 youth population in 2024.<\/p>\n

Police-reported youth violent crimes also saw a two per cent decrease from 2023 to 2024, and Ontario saw a four per cent decrease in its provincial youth crime rate during the same time period.<\/p>\n

Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our\u00a0homepage<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0sign up for our newsletters<\/a>\u00a0so we can keep you informed.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government has renewed funding for the Building Safer Communities Fund, and the City of Ottawa is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,196151,3234,170040,86515,223978,20739,157536,223977,210071,223976],"class_list":{"0":"post-586831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-city-of-ottawa","11":"tag-funding","12":"tag-gang-violence","13":"tag-gary-anandasangaree","14":"tag-minister-of-public-safety","15":"tag-ottawa","16":"tag-ottawa-citizen","17":"tag-priority-neighbourhood-youth-initiative","18":"tag-youth-crime","19":"tag-youth-violence"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}