To give you and perhaps others some details about the program, it was created in 1998 and had a budget of $15.6 million and that has never been increased. After September 11, a fourth department was added, which was the Canada Border Services Agency, as it was created. That same amount of money, $15.6 million, went from three departments to four departments. Now CBSA has its own funding and has taken some of that funding as permanent funding. So it's actually down to $8.4 million, I understand, for the three departments that are left.
It's absolutely right in terms of cost effectiveness, working at the border. It means you can have many more cases where people are then excluded from entering Canada. What we feel is very important, at least in a few cases at a time, is that we do have the resources in Canada to have the RCMP investigate allegations of war crimes and genocide, and to bring some of the cases to trial. We believe strongly that this actually is what sends a message.
The things we do at the border are cost effective, but what do they achieve? They might contribute to the prevention of atrocities by sending a message that you can't go to another country very easily, but if people know they might face a life sentence for the commission of atrocities, that's something we start to see globally. We are seeing that globally. We're seeing many countries throughout Europe and countries in other parts of the world addressing their own history. Then we've sent a message that there will be accountability, and I think, it's very intuitive that we will start to see a lessening of these situations occurring. That's a wise investment.