Yes, definitely. There is a famous expression, I think by Will Rogers, which says that you might be on the right track, but if you don't start moving, you're going to get run over.
What we had was a model from the 1950s with the RCMP out west. The western provinces at that time, as they were lightly populated, were not necessarily prosperous. Ontario and certainly Quebec have their own policing. You have to ask yourself, why, in a prosperous province such as British Columbia, do we still have 7,000 RCMP officers out there doing this kind of work? Some of the unfortunate problems the RCMP has had are due to the poor financing that is there.
As chairman of the commission dealing with public complaints against the RCMP, I dealt with a shooting case that resulted in a fatality. Mr. Cullen, I am sure you are very familiar with the Ian Bush case. When the officer went into his station, there was no one there at that time, not a soul. The officer had somebody he had arrested, and he was talking to him. To record what happened, he had to take, at the time, a video cassette recorder, put it in, and activate it, which hadn't been done. It only looked one way.
In another model, in Burnaby, B.C., when you walk into that station, there are motion detector cameras, CCTV, that record everything that transpires. There is a shooting and a lengthy inquiry as to what happened. Why? Because not only are they frequently undermanned there, but they are underfinanced and don't have the latest technology. You'll probably see other comments in terms of shootings that occur where they do not have the proper equipment.
The RCMP's reputation is attacked in many areas. The resources are being rededicated to visible crime, which is crime on the street that people are concerned about. The officer you hire and train to do that is not an officer you can use for the sophisticated crime that I am talking about.
If you can have municipal policing in Edmonton, Calgary, and these places, why is the RCMP in some of these areas? Get them out of there. Don't distract them. Let's have a national police force that deals with complex crime that can't be addressed. It can be done. It has been done. We should be doing more of it. We have to save the RCMP from itself, because it is wedded to this model that, I think, is killing it.