Thank you for coming. Mr. Bonin wanted you to come. Others will put his questions for him.
You know that I am very aware of the challenges. I wonder how you are going to proceed, because you spoke of using Service Canada, and we understand that. I have been told that Service Canada needs to hire many people to do the work that we are doing. Their results will not be any better than ours.
The first question I want to put to you, because I am worried, has to do with emergency services. There are no emergency services anywhere to the north of Toronto or Ottawa, except in Thunder Bay, which is 16 hours from Sudbury by road or 10 hours from Sault Ste. Marie. There are four offices in Toronto. There are two offices here.
Do you not think that it could be important, on certain occasions, to have emergency services available? Due to human nature, urgent situations come up, and they can come up often. A mining town like ours has many business transactions with foreign countries. Many of us have to go all the way to Toronto to get a passport. It is really unfair to compel them to do this when they need a passport in a hurry. We no longer have an emergency service.
My office has been working with the community for years. I understand, and let me reassure you that you did an extraordinary job in facing those challenges, and I thank you for it. However, the only big problem is with emergency passports. Service Canada will not be able to handle them either.