Public Accounts committee  You may. Thank you. I'd like to add a point about the equitable distribution, and part of the challenge with that is that the program does serve two very different types of policing—one being self-administered, and one being the community tripartite agreement. The sizes of those self-administered services are quite different.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Nunavut has just acceded to the program for the first time since its inception, and we are in the midst of rolling out community tripartite agreements in collaboration with the territory, as well as with the communities there. I will just note that the program itself works slightly differently in the territories due to the fact that communities are often integrated, so it does require a slightly different conversation.

Public Accounts committee  I mean that this program is designed to operate on reserve, so in the territories where you have communities that are integrated or are not specifically a reserve, the program does operate differently. We have community tripartite agreements that serve cities where people are integrated, and we're ensuring that there is a culturally responsive complement of officers available for Inuit people who are living in the city.

Public Accounts committee  I cannot say that we have found it. We do know that it happened. We know that we are taking the steps that emanated from that. Part of that is leading to better tracking, which paradoxically sometimes leads to greater surpluses because we know better what is happening on the ground.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. With respect to those funding decisions—I think this is something the Auditor General spoke to when she mentioned the fact that some of our funding decisions are based on past funding decisions—the nature of the program provides funding to police officers, and that requires us to earmark that money in a year, and for all future years, because we know that police officer will be in place.

Status of Women committee  I believe that question is directed generally.

Status of Women committee  What I can say from the perspective of Public Safety—and I would refer to our aboriginal community safety planning initiative—is that it is aimed at bringing together the community with provinces, territories, local governments and industry to look at issues affecting community safety.

Status of Women committee  In fact, I can. We have embarked upon the co-development in earnest. We have completed 12 rounds of virtual engagement sessions and an additional one, which we held directly with Quebec. The others were national in scope. We examined the issues related to what is required to establish first nations policing as an essential service.

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, I note that the question was directed to me and Ms. Brady. I am not in a position to answer that directly. I'll take note of it and provide you with an answer on that issue.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. With respect to at least first nations and Inuit policing programs, we do collect data. Part of that data is correlated with external data. What I can say is that we know from our own data collection that community members who have a self-administered police force in their community feel far more secure and they more comfortable interacting with the police.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. I'm going to ask Ms. Van De Bogart to respond.

Status of Women committee  The RCMP is part of the Public Safety portfolio.

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, what I can say is—

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, is that a question for Public Safety?

Status of Women committee  We discussed the issue of culturally responsive policing. You are correct when you say that there are many times when women and, I would say more broadly, indigenous people do not trust the police. For this reason, the federal government has embarked upon the co-development of federal legislation to establish first nations police forces and first nations policing as an essential service.