Yes, and I'll give you a specific example. The town of Daysland is a small town in central Alberta. They have a detachment that is in another municipality and has the RCMP coverage for their area. I believe they have five officers allocated in their budget. Two to three are on maternity leave, so they only have two to three that are available to service that entire region. Maternity leave officers count on the allocation, unfortunately, even if they're not physically present and able to do the job.
It is a budget consideration, but it's also the fact that there are not enough recruits going through the training at the RCMP depot in order for us to be able to access them. One thing that we have said we need is better screening for the dropouts who are going through the program because there is a high number of dropouts who go through partial training and then leave. It is a serious concern, especially in rural Alberta where municipal councils are funding these positions. They're putting them into their budgets, and they have the money available to fund them, but there is no RCMP officer available to come. It's causing a significant concern.
We're also seeing that there is a problem when we are supplementing RCMP officers by adding more clerical staff. In order for RCMP officers to be efficient with their time, we need to have clerical staff to be able to do the majority of their paperwork. We're paying out in any way possible to get the coverage, but we're not able to access what we need.