Mr. Speaker, putting victims first as well as recognizing the good work that front-line officers do is very important in all of the legislation our government puts forward. There is a couple of ways that the bill and the changes to the witness protection program would help our officers. First, it would create greater prohibitions regarding what kind of information could be disclosed about someone who is within a witness protect program or who has administered it, which is obviously law enforcement and its agencies.
It is pretty unbelievable, but up until now, all that would not be able to be disclosed was the name and location of someone who was in a witness protection program. There are so many more ways to track someone down, so we have expanded that to a much broader, much greater amount of information that would be protected for not only those people who are part of the witness protection program, but also the law enforcement people who help enforce it.
This would help victims. We hope it would also help us prevent and deter crime, find out where those organizations are working and allow law enforcement a greater ability to infiltrate, stop them and keep our communities safer.