—so I think there's obviously room for interpretation that would allow the minister and the department to provide information but not so as to be injurious to the conduct of international relations or national security and so on and so forth.
One of the criticisms you also levelled at the bill was that paying for information may provide perverse incentives. I find that somewhat contradictory to the present public policy in Canada. We have Crime Stoppers across the country, which police of jurisdiction see as one of our most successful programs. The Toronto Police Service issued a news release last year on the Toronto Crime Stoppers program, which pays people for information. They noted that:
The 6,025 tips and additional 10,536 follow-up tips resulted in a 90 per cent increase in arrests, [a] 13 per cent increase in charges laid, [a] 113 per cent increase in property seized and a staggering 394 per cent increase in illegal firearms taken off the streets.
That program is paying for information that will allow the authorities to go after people who are doing wrong things. That program is seen as overwhelmingly successful across the country, and I'm not understanding the logic of why it wouldn't be successful in the federal context with hostage-taking, which is also a violation of law.