Two federal legislators were in Dauphin last week for a conversation about crime.

Specifically, Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa MP Dan Mazier and Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP Frank Caputo were in town to highlight two private member’s bills focused on bail reform.

“We’re going to have a conversation around bail reform, what that actually means and what we as legislators, as MPs can do and how Parliament works,” Mazier told the crowd before introducing Caputo, who is a member of the Standing Committee for Justice and Human Rights, as well as a former Crown prosecutor, parole officer and a former instructor at Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law.

“So he has a wealth of knowledge.”

Crime is a problem across the country, Caputo said, and there are no easy answers.

“I’ll tell you right now we can’t fix this overnight,” he said. “Sometimes when difficult things happen in the community, when we have matters that are unsustainable . . . when the toothpaste comes out of the tube it doesn’t go back in as quickly as it came out. This is a complex problem that we’re talking about today, so I’m not going to stand before you and put my integrity on the line by saying I have all the answers because I don’t.”

Violent crime has increased by 32 per cent since 2015, Caputo said, while gang-related murders have doubled in the same time frame. And while those kinds of crime have historically been associated with large urban centres, they are becoming more common in smaller communities such as Dauphin, Caputo said.

“And that makes it difficult because number one, we’re not used to it, but number two, we don’t always have the resources or the knowledge to tackle these things,” he said.

Check this week's Dauphin Herald for more!