Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I was saying, part of the accountability of the Minister of Public Safety, obviously, is on the spending in the budget or the plans for our security agencies that he oversees.
It might be of some interest. I was referring to the RCMP and the experience of the inadequate community policing they give, at least in my part of the world in Nova Scotia. Regarding the community where the mass killings were, it took 45 minutes for the RCMP to get there because they're not stationed in that county.
Most of the residents there know that, at certain times of the day and certain days of the week, it's easy to speed because the RCMP aren't there, even though they have a contract with the Nova Scotia government to provide adequate policing services. I know that the RCMP has, since 2004, received about $1.5 billion in taxpayer money, so I think the Minister of Public Safety needs to be accountable for that fact.
In fact, there is a wide discussion going on in some provinces. Newfoundland has its own police force to deal with community policing. Ontario has its own police force. Quebec has its own police force. Alberta is having discussions about having its own police force.
Recently, a colleague of mine on our side of the House did an OPQ on 911 services and found that, for example, Nova Scotia has the highest vacancy rate of permanent positions for RCMP 911 offices in the country. Thirty-three per cent of the permanent positions of the 911 RCMP facility in Nova Scotia are vacant, which compounds our issues around crime.
In fact, we're dealing right now with the issue of the enforcement of the Fisheries Act around elvers. I've raised it a number of times in the House and a number of times with the Minister of Fisheries. Some of you may have heard me raise it. If you're in a city, you probably don't know what an elver is. It's a little baby eel. They're not as cute as seals, especially baby seals, but they're a lot more valuable. They sell for about $5,000 a kilogram. For five years, we've been warning the government of increasing poaching. There are only eight commercial licences for those and another three for first nations.
There are two aspects to the enforcement of the law. One is DFO's enforcement, which falls to their police force called Conservation and Protection—C and P as it's more colloquially known—and the RCMP, because the RCMP will back them up when we have disputes like we had with the lobster dispute a few years ago in the previous Parliament around 2020, but we also have the issue of this situation.
I've met with a lot of my constituents. A lot of these licences are in my riding. They phone the RCMP. When they can get through.... They phone two lines, actually. They phone the crime line that is listed in the phone book for DFO when they see illegal activity happening, and they phone the RCMP line. In fact, 911 gets called when there are crimes being committed.
Ten minutes from my house.... You may have read a couple of weeks ago that with this illegal elver fishery, an individual was beaten with a pipe. The RCMP got a tip through that line, pursued that individual and arrested them the next morning.
There have been reports to the RCMP of elver poaching in a community called Hubbards—some of you may know it. It's on St. Margarets Bay. In Hubbards, there were calls to the RCMP, constantly, from the neighbours who live by the property, not only about the trespassing happening on their property but also about what was going on, even before the elver season started. Though not quite as cute as baby seals, glass eels are fished only from March 28 to the beginning of June in the rivers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They are then sold as live fish that get transported to Asia to be grown to full-size eels, then used for seafood consumption.
We have been constantly complaining to the RCMP over the last five years about this going on. Two minutes from my home on the Ingram River.... The RCMP were called because the poachers park on the private land of this homeowner. They park themselves in the evening, in the dark, on the river, and they catch elvers with illegal nets. Unlicensed elvers at $5,000 a kilogram are being sold on the black market. The homeowner has called me and the RCMP many times and complained. I have visited her a number of times, both while the legal elver season was on and 17 days ago, on the last two weekends. The minister closed the entire elver fishery 17 days ago. Do you know what happened when the minister closed the legal elver fishery?