It's good to see members from northwestern Ontario here. I think we also see Dr. Powlowski.
It's good to see you as well.
Eric, when we look at the first nations policing program, it is so restrictive in what policing can do. We have service gap deliveries. You heard me mention victim support. We have high rates of domestic violence occurring in our communities, yet we have to apply for funding to run a program to support victims. When you look at crime units, we look at our crime severity index for indigenous policing. Many indigenous policing services are very high on this index, yet we can't have crime units to investigate major crimes.
You look at emergency response and how many emergency response incidents occur, like missing people when they're out on the land harvesting. We can't have a program to go to search for them. We have to bring in all these services. We have to bring in our policing partners such as the OPP to conduct these services on our behalf.
Those are just a couple of the aspects when I say that the first nations policing program needs to be updated. When you look at a police service such as the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service with over 200 members, front-line police officers, and you think about another.... We are almost the size of the Thunder Bay Police Service. We're very similar in size, yet the Thunder Bay Police Service has victim support. They have emergency response. They have court sections. We have as well, but they have more court sections, more court programming. When you look at the size of our service and you compare us to the Thunder Bay Police Service, there is a lot of disparity there. We should have the same services as our counterpart just on Balmoral Street, but we don't have it.
When I say that the first nations policing program is outdated, we should be able to have these services within our police service delivery, but we don't because of the terms and conditions of the first nations policing program. Again, like you heard from our legal counsel, it is very restricted.