When you look at the process.... As I said, the Winnipegosis police cover about 10 reserves and Métis communities, so they're fully spread out. They're only there to pick up people when action happens in the community. There's no funding balance between us and next door to the reserve. We don't have any policing. We pay taxes like you and everybody else, but we don't have the services there to align or work with us to make sure that it's dealt with in the community or effected and quickly reacted to in the community.
We're starting to see a greater approach of gangs and drug dealers coming into the villages and communities. We know who they are. We talk to the RCMP. I even personally phone the RCMP at times and say, “Look, this house is the one that's selling drugs.” They say that they can't do anything unless we can prove to them that they're selling drugs. They want us to go with a camera and catch them in a picture or something to prove they're selling drugs. That puts some people in harm's way, by the way.
Again, we're trying to figure out how we find that balance, but if there is no approach to investing in our communities to have policing or community police forces.... We used to have constables. I'm talking about 30 years ago. They disappeared. We used to have them. They made a big difference because they were right in the village and they knew everybody. They could go to your house. If there was something happening and people were having a problem—say there was a party going on—the constable could go to that house and calm everybody down because they knew him and he knew the people. However, we don't have that, so we get more crime, more reaction and then more harm. It really costs us, overall, as taxpayers, a lot more money because now you have to pick them up and take them to jail. By that time, harm has started in that village or community, and it lingers on to family clans now.