Ms. Fortier, thank you for your question.
You are right. As the Minister of Public Safety, I have the privilege of seeing the very impressive work of men and women at, for example, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Correctional Service of Canada, the Parole Board of Canada or, obviously, the Canada Security Intelligence Service. I also have the privilege of seeing the work of officials at the Department of Public Safety, who try to coordinate some of those large agencies’ operations.
There’s always financial pressure on those agencies, who do their best with the budgets they have. Our government decided it was worthwhile to increase, for example, investment in the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canada Security Intelligence Service, who had not received an increase. The context of their work has changed. I see the important and essential work these agencies do, which is—as it must be—not necessarily visible for many Canadians. We therefore decided it was worthwhile to increase those budgets.
Ms. Fortier, you referred to the fact that the former government cut—I think—800 border services officer positions during the last two years of its mandate. I do not know if it cut 1,000 jobs with the intention of cutting 800 more, or if it was the opposite. Did it cut 800 or 1,000 positions with the intention of making more cuts after an election which, thank goodness, they lost? I don’t remember, but I was very surprised, especially because our colleagues here talked mistakenly about cuts we could have made at the Canada Border Services Agency, when it was their government that decided it was a good idea to cut the budget.
I recognize we can always do more with more money. I often tease my colleagues about it. My work consists of convincing the Minister of Finance, my colleagues and my boss to invest in the right places as much as possible, specifically to give agencies the tools they need. I trust the work being done, but I also accept the idea that we can always work on adding resources and staff. We do so based on changing threats, in a context of foreign interference, and in a context of concerns regarding border security.
We will really support this kind of process, specifically to build Canadians’ trust.